Chimaera
by Psychadelico
Summary: Vernon Dursley had a chance to rid himself of the Freak, and he took it. As a result, the one who would be a beacon of hope, Gryffindor's Golden Boy, and The-Man-Who-Conquered had his fate irrevocably and horrifically changed. Instead of a champion of the innocents of the Wizarding World, he became something far, far darker and more powerful, something horrifying. MultiXover
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Vernon Dursley was disgusted. Not mildly disgusted, or mostly disgusted, he was completely and totally disgusted with the situation he found himself in. In his arms was the _freak_ , his 14 month old nephew in law, who was constantly making disgusting and loud noises and drawing attention to himself as Vernon walked through the shipping warehouse. Grunnings was entering into a large-scale contract with the shipping company in the hope of cutting the cost of production down and maximizing profit, and so Vernon was delegated to physically going to a warehouse to see the company's competence personally. Then, it became a family trip and Petunia convinced him that yes, they did need to bring the freak with them or the other freaks would come and punish them for leaving _it_ behind, and the whole mess concluded with him being stuck with the brat for an entire afternoon. Then the thing started to wail, and would not stop making that noise no matter how much Vernon tried to shush him in progressively more forceful ways.

He stopped in his tracks all of a sudden, facing a single crate. It was filled with meat and preservatives, and it was the kind of crate that was made to be completely airtight as it was shipped. It had a marker on it designating it as a long-distance and high-altitude delivery. He was struck with an idea, and a wicked smirk blossomed on his mouth. He quickly shoved the almost-toddler freak into the crate, and sealed the lid, locking the small crate so tightly that not even air could get through. That was three ways at least for the freak to die, if not from suffocating from being in the airtight case then the cold of being in the upper atmosphere would, and if not even that did then the poisons in the preservatives would be more than enough to finish the job. Strutting proudly, he swaggered away. Vernon was confident that within a few days, the freak would be dead and out of his life, and if the _other freaks_ came looking, they'd only have the shipping company to blame. Vernon and his family would be innocent as can be.

His smile as he left the warehouse of the Greengrass Shipping Company a few hours later still showed a few to many teeth.

XXXXXXX

"This crate's got a bit higher magical readings than normal."

"Oh, that's the ghoul flesh. That box's always funny, the spells that they use to kill the ghouls have to be powerful enough to get past their magical resistance and leave some spell residue, don't worry about it."

"Ah, right... Say, what would you need ghoul flesh for?"

"Some potion that's supposed to let you regrow limbs, or something. I don't really care, I'm just a foreman at a shipping company not Severus Snape."

"Alright, don't go PMSing on me like my wife, I'll get back to work. Bloody foreman."

"Good, and if you keep muttering under your breath like that I'll have you working the dragon dung shipments."

XXXXXXX

"Dr, Kanou, your package is here."

"Ah, good!" the elderly doctor looked up from the scene of gore he was cutting into with a glowing red-and-black scalpel, his white hair tainted with smatterings of blood from the body he was... exploring. "Just place it in the corner there, will you?" The white coated young man nodded and put the small crate down, dismissing the delivery man that was helping him carry the heavy crate into the room. The young man started to unlock the seals around the lid.

"What do you need from ghouls all the way from England?" The man asked. "...If that's not above my paygrade, Dr. Kanou," He apologized sheepishly. Inside he was delirious from fear, as Kanou was known to be horrifically vindictive.

"Oh, no trouble," the Dr. waved the rude question off, "You're a first class investigator, Arima, you're using the Quinque I've created just like every other investigator of your rank, you can ask about them if you wish." Kanou smiled beatifically at the stoic investigator, "I take periodic looks at foreign ghoul samples to get a better picture of what ghouls are as a cohesive species. The ghouls in this city in southern Japan are the most powerful and rampant, but progress is fueled by understanding, and limiting research to a single location would be limiting that understanding." Arima nodded thoughtfully, his usual response to new information. Kanou set his scalpel down, and moved to help Arima open the crate. Behind him, the ghoul's corpse started to weakly try to regenerate, but it was utterly starved of nutrients, and had been ravaged by the elderly scientist to the point that it merely twitched on the lab table helplessly. Finally, the two humans together lifted the lid off the case. What they saw made even the perpetually emotionless face of Kishou Arima go slack in shock. Inside the crate, which had been airtight, cold enough to freeze flesh in less than a second, and toxic enough to kill a grown man in four hours, for over 36 hours as the crate shipped, was a single, flawless child no older than two at the extreme most. In utter defiance of completely inhospitable conditions it was breathing normally, and had a total absence of sickness, weakness, or anything else indicating that it wasn't at the absolute peak of health. It defied every bit of medical knowledge that the both of them knew. In fact, the child almost seemed to _glow_ it was so healthy.

Kanou quickly picked up the infant, dropping his side of the crate's lid and running his eyes over the child analytically and gaining a faint mad gleam in his gaze. It was wearing a badly fit blue onesie which was in a state of mild disrepair, suggesting a poor background. Black hair, green eyes, pale skin, healthy body weight for its size, though in a few places like the neck and arms it appeared to have slightly less body fat, possibly the beginnings of malnutrition. Most obviously was an angry red scar on its forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. It was a strange scar, with the structure of a bladed incision but far too perfect in its shape for it to have been actually cut into its head. The baby itself looked unassuming, but behind that was a deep chasm of mystery.

Kanou placed the child on a clean gurney and quickly drew a small amount of blood and then placed the blood in an analyzer. He took the temperature of the infant and went through a simple physical checkup while the analyzer was working. Every test he ran increased his excitement, and his amazement. The child's body temperature was 10 degrees Celsius below freezing, and yet his body was still functioning perfectly, and not a drop of his blood was frozen. His blood pressure was so low that his veins should have collapsed. Then his blood tests came back. His blood was so full of the pesticides and preservatives from the shipping crate that it would have killed a fully grown man three times over, much less an infant his age. Further, his blood had the lowest Rc cell concentration in any human he had ever recorded. Normal humans had Rc cell concentrations of 100-500 per millimeter of blood. He had 5 per millimeter. Kanou decided that he would push this child, he would force it to ascend, for this child was the most perfect human being he'd ever seen, surpassing in endurance and survivability even some of the ghouls that Kanou had seen. This child would be the key to escaping from the twisted birdcage that was the world, the key to lifting humanity to the perfect reality that they deserved.

XXXXXXX

Ten years later

"Happy Birthday, Zero," Dr. Kanou said warmly as he stepped into the lab. On the table was a boy somewhere between ten and thirteen. He had electrodes attached to his left arm, testing his ability to withstand electrical shock. His right arm was being injected with small doses of liquid nitrogen and similar cryogenic substances to test his resistance to cold and toxins. His legs had multiple incisions made by various implements, each with a different kind of blade to test his ability to heal from damage. Kanou had made similar tests ever since he'd "acquired" his best test subject, but he repeated them regularly to observe any changes to the child's abilities. Given the boy's ability to withstand virtually anything with zero permanent damage, he had given the child the designation Subject Zero. He'd often had a conversation with the child, if Kanou's once sided musings could truly be called a conversation. Kanou regularly conversed with his subjects, in his gentle and caring persona, though not out of any effort to keep his subjects sane. It did in some cases have that effect, but that wasn't Kanou's motivation. He spoke to them because he was completely, and totally insane himself, and he had the urge to share his vision of the world with those he was studying.

Zero didn't respond, neither to Kanou's words, nor the extreme pain that he was experiencing. One of Kanou's earliest discoveries was that Zero didn't heal. He regenerated, meaning that instead of new cells filling in damaged areas, with the cells surrounding the area dividing and copying (and therefore degrading) his DNA, new cells divided to repair damage forming the DNA of the cells that _should_ be there, not the cells surrounding the area. He was completely immune to aging in the way normal humans were through cellular degredation. Sure, he could still be killed by a buildup of foreign chemicals and infections until the combined might of infections and toxins forced him to age and die, but it would take somewhere around twice as long as normal humans take to die of old age.

Zero was a small boy on account of the sparsity of the nutrient injections that Kanou gave the boy in an attempt to see his reaction to starvation. He had long, dark hair, pale skin with pink dots and lines from Kanou's invasive surgical tests and injections, and glassy and dull green eyes. His limbs were bony and thin, as Kanou kept him perpetually restrained so his muscles never saw any use. On his forehead, however, remained the same perfectly shaped pink scar that so intrigued and frustrated the good doctor.

This day was special because it was something that Kanou was working towards ever since he acquired Zero. Kanou was testing the ability of Zero to handle higher numbers of Rc cells, and Zero always reacted positively. In fact, any time that Zero was introduced Rc cells, the Rc cells took root in his body and adapted to suit him perfectly, and then didn't leave. Over the ten years that Kanou had had Zero Zero's Rc cell count had risen to 74 from 5. Still lower than normal humans, but over 40 times his natural count. With Zero's ability to adapt perfectly to Rc cells, he was uniquely likely to survive being given a Kakuhou and made into an artificial ghoul. Kanou was planning on waiting for a few more years to see if he could learn anything new from Zero, but even after thoroughly exploring just how far Zero's pseudo-immortality extended, but seeing as he was unable to discern how Zero's endurance worked, he was unwilling to wait on his ghoul related research any longer. The matter had come to a head when Kanou had found a normal human that was compatible with ghoul Kakuhou implantation. Kanou knew that even if Zero's body rejected the Kakuhou, he could simply remove it and Zero would heal, so he would serve as the testing ground, he would be the proof that a Kakuhou could be implanted successfully.

Kanou moved to detach all of the testing equipment, steadily pulling needles out of Zero's arms, and pulling electrodes and other sensors off of his skin. Zero barely twitched as he felt the sharp stabs of pain from the needles scraping against nerves. When Kanou was finished he took a quick blood sample to make sure that Zero was in a workable condition. Zero had frighteningly high levels of liquid nitrogen, and toxic chemicals in his blood, frightening for a normal human, but they were well within acceptable ranges for Zero. Kanou had found that if he injected Zero with enough liquid Nitrogen that a full three fourths of Zero's blood was actually the cryogenic substance, he would start to experience hypothermia. As long as Kanou kept the concentration of foreign chemicals in Zero's blood below 50%, Zero was in no danger of dying.

An assistant wheeled a ghoul into the room, a prepared Rinkaku-type with a low Rc cell count, to make the shock of the implantation process as minimal as possible. Kanou retrieved a Quinque Steel hypodermic needle, and injected the specially prepared sedatives into Subject Zero. New assistants wheeled in the necessary tools for the surgery. Zero was flipped carefully on the table so that his back was facing upwards, and he was strapped back down onto it so that he couldn't move in the slightest. A belt around Zero's waist and neck kept his torso motionless so Kanou could work without any undue effort spared to keep Zero's torso stable and motionless. It wasn't that Kanou was overly concerned that Zero would survive the proceedure, he simply performed all of the precautions to make sure that in the case that the proceedure _did_ fail, it was Zero's fault, not his. Kanou took a scalpel Quinque from the tray next to him, and made an incision on the ghoul in the small of its back. Kanou didn't waste sedatives on such a worthless specimen, so the ghoul screamed. Kanou hummed absent-mindedly as he clinically cut into the back of the ghoul and hacked an entire organ out of its body. Kanou was experienced, so it only took him a few minutes, nowhere near long enough for the ghoul's regeneration to try and heal the incision and stop Kanou's progress.

Kanou lifted the ghoul's Kakuhou out of the ghoul's body using specially made oversized forceps, and placed the organ into a temporary holding jar filled with a solution that would keep it alive and healthy for the few minutes that it would be separated from another body. He moved over to Zero, replacing his used scalpel with a fresh one. Several incisions later, Kanou took the Kakuhou out of the jar and, while an assistant held the sides of the incisions open, he placed the Kakuhou into the small of Zero's back four inches below the bottom of Zero's ribcage. He put the implements down, and his assistants moved to take the now quietly whimpering ghoul out of the room along with all of the other equipment involved with the implantation surgery. Kanou stayed, observing Zero. A few minutes after the others had left, a small red spider-like structure emerged from Zero's incision, and started to visibly repair the cut at a painfully slow rate. Kanou simply smiled gleefully, and left, intending on implanting the Binge Eater's Kakuhou into Ken Kaneki.

On the operating table, Zero let out the first sound he made that day. As the ghoulish organ forcefully integrated itself into Zero's body, and his body fought back, he whimpered faintly.

XXXXXXX

"Integration seems to be complete, there is a complete lack of swelling, discoloration, or other indication of rejection. Subject's Rc count is at 1136 and climbing, a number notably higher than the Kakuhou donator. Subject is in the process of developing the ghoul toughness and physical prowess. Kakugan is developing before my eyes as I dictate," Kanout said aloud, running his eyes over Subject Zero while an assistant wrote down his words a few steps away. "Subject has displayed the healing factor of ghouls in the days since implantation, reaching the speed of the donor one day after and then exceeding it. Unknown if this is an advantage of One-Eyed-Ghouls, or if it is merely an advantage of Subject Zero. Taking Kakuhou sample." Dr. Kanou used a long, wide needle made of quinque steel to gently (mostly) take a tissue sample from Zero's Kakuhou. He placed the sample on a sterile plate, and shaved a thin layer off of the sample, and he placed it under a microscope. "Rc cells are… being adapted to Zero's body instead of the expected reverse. Within a few remaining hours the Kakuhou will have ceased to be foreign tissue and will be fully adapted to his body, as if it was already there his entire life. If there are no noticeable problems with the implantation within the next week than Subject Zero will be nominated as the prime candidate for project Chimaera." Kanou motioned to the assistant, and the worker stopped recording, looking a little green.

"Have an Ukaku Kakuhou prepared for implantation," Kanou ordered, as he watched the Rc cells in the tissue sample through the microscope. The Red Child cells twitched, their fetus-like appearances clearly visible under the powerful magnification Kanou was looking through. Kanou sighed in admiration at Zero's inexplicable abilities.

A little over a week later Kanou had returned.

"Hello Zero, your implantation has gone flawlessly," Kanou addressed the shackled boy informatively, his tone light and complimentary. Zero was upright this time, hung by his wrists with shackles that covered his entire forearms, so that there was no chance of Zero breaking his fingers and escaping. Zero responded by lashing at the doctor with two long tentacles that emerged from his lower back. Kanou blocked the boy's Kagune with a Koukaku Quinque shield. "Oh, no sign of the donor's influence at all, that's a Kagune that's completely your own," Kanou noticed. The boy's Kagune had wide, thick tentacles that had a reptilian appearance, with spikes along both sides of the limbs' somewhat flattened edge that gave the predatory organ a serrated appearance. At the tip was a single large barbed blade. It looked… draconian, for lack of a better explanation.

"Magnificent," Kanou breathed. Zero lashed at the Dr. with his Kagune again, but the effort was futile. The doctor's Quinque was too defensively powerful for Zero to get past. "You're showing remarkable control with your Kagune, especially considering they're not naturally part of your body," Kanou observed as Zero's glowing red limbs sliced at him almost faster than his eye could see. Zero remained silent. "You should know that the other artificial ghoul has accepted his implanted Kakuhou as well, you've got a big brother now," Kanou added conversationally. He pulled a dart gun from his lab coat and pointed it at Zero through the whirl of writhing Kagune. He pulled the trigger and it shot a dart Quinque at Zero, the Rc suppressants in the injection cutting off Zero's connection to his Kagune and making the predatory organs retract into the small of his back. Zero whimpered in pain, something Kanou noted to himself absently, but Kanou had a different job to focus on. Kanou walked around behind the boy, placing a jar with a round red organ suspended in it onto a table off to the side. Zero grimaced, knowing what was coming, but was unable to stop it restricted as he was. Kanou took a blood sample, as always, and then cut open Zero's upper back to implant the Ukaku Kakuhou from the jar. Throughout it all, even as he was splattered with Zero's blood, his grandfatherly smile never left his face.

"I heard about the ghoul Nutcracker," Kanou told him as he worked, "she has both a Bikaku and a Koukaku Kagune, giving her incredible adaptability in combat, each of her Kagune covering the weaknesses of the other. In your case you'll have a Rinkaku and an Ukaku, a much more offensively oriented combination but you'll still be able to cover the weaknesses of each of you Kagune with the abilities of the other, just like she does." Kanou watched as the organ vanished under rapidly healing tissue between the top of Zero's shoulder blades. "Oh, your regeneration is a wonder to behold," Kanou praised, watching over Zero for a while longer like a proud parent watching their child succeed.

Zero integrated the Kakuhou just like he did the first over the course of three days. Unknown to Kanou, something else was happening as well, deep within the depths Zero's mind. Zero would have known what was happening if his mind hadn't utterly shattered from the final shock of the implantation, placing him in a deep coma.

It was a metaphorical cocoon that would mark the true beginning of his life.

XXXXXXX

 **Well, here's my first story that I'm going to publish on this site. Review, advice, and criticism is welcome, but this is my story and I have plans for it and I may ignore advice if it takes the plot in a direction that I don't want it to go.**

 **This will be a crossover between multiple things, and so some aspects of everything will be adjusted so that timelines and locations fit together without clashing. So if you read something that's not canon I probably did it on purpose, I hate reading fics where people tried to write about something without knowing anything about the way the particular world works. On the other hand in my personal opinion the purpose of fanfiction is to find a new version of something you love, not just an imitation of what's "Canon", so yes there will be things that aren't true in the actual Harry Potter and Tokyo Ghoul.**

 **I should mention that I own neither of them, just in case you didn't guess by now.**

 **I write quickly when I'm inspired, so if I get a bit of positive feedback I'll probably be dishing out chapters once or twice a month at the slowest, and if I get into a focused mood I might get two out in a week. It depends. I've got a few chapters written already, but I'm going to stay a few ahead of the ones I post so I can go back and edit them.**

 **So, if the prologue hasn't scared you off, enjoy.**

 **EDIT:**

 **Well, I'm moved into my college dorm, classes start in two days, and I'm chipping away at the next chapter. I would like to make a very, very heartfelt "thank you" to Hii-tan for all the grammar corrections, and help. I'm really not satisfied with the grammar and pacing at the beginning here, so in order to give my brain a little break, I'm going to be going back and doing a lot of editing to try and bring the writing of the earlier chapters up to par, because it'd really suck if I write really well in the second half of the fic, but people leave on the second chapter because the beginning sucks.**

 **Also, I'm starting a bit of a poll here. At the end of every chapter I'm going to do an interlude from the perspective of a character other than the protagonists. You guys get to vote on who the interlude is focused on, or however you want to phrase it. Like at the end of this prologue, for example, I could write an interlude from the perspective of Kanou's co-workers who've noticed him getting obsessive about a certain project.**

 **Thanks again for all the support, I'll go get back to work.**


	2. Glossary of Terms

**Glossary of Terms**

So it occurred to me that not everybody knows the japanese names for Ghouls bodyparts. If you find a word you don't know check here for a definition, and if you still don't know it pop me a PM or something and I'll add it.

Kagune: the glowing tentacles of death that ghouls use to kill each other. They're a predatory organ that comes from sacks in the ghoul's back, and each is unique.

Kakuhou: the cluster of sacks that contain Kagune. That's pretty much all that canon Tokyo Ghoul tells us, but my assumptions are that this is a sort of central hub for everything that makes ghouls different from humans, given that Kaneki literally became an entirely new species just by having a single organ transplanted into him. Who needs genetics?

Rinkaku/Ukaku/Koukaku/Bikaku: these are actually different kinds of ghouls, specifically different kinds of Rc cells, the cells that make ghouls different from humans. They have their Kakuhou in different locations and their Kagune follow different stereotypes, but each kind of ghoul has specific characteristics, advantages, and weaknesses.

 **So that's all I've got for now, let me know if anything needs to be added. I'll add things as needed when new content shows up.**


	3. Chapter 1: Genesis

**Chapter 1**

The implantation of my second kakuhou was one of the most painful experiences of my life. My senses are incredibly attuned to my own Rc cells, so the feeling of the foreign organ trying to corrode me and overwrite my Rc cells with its own design was… uncomfortable, to say the least. It was like having acid poured into my veins, and I would know exactly what that feels like. However my Rc cells had the backing of something else, which gave them a particular edge, and so my Rc cells subsumed and dominated the invaders, remaking them in my image, instead of allowing them to remake me in theirs.

As I adjusted to my first kakuhou, I gradually became aware of my Rc cells, and gained the ability to control them like any other limb, which is how ghouls control their Kagune in the first place, though they don't have the ability to control their Rc cells in places as unassuming as their blood and other normal flesh. I could control my own ghoulish physiology far beyond what any other ghoul could. It was a useless ability to me now, as the only thing my Rc cells actually did was the normal passive physical enhancements and regeneration, but if I wanted to I could move them around. My entire body adapted to have a uniform concentration of the tiny organisms, from the cells in my hair to the tips of my toes. At the time I had no idea what was happening, as the only education I had was Kanou's… talks... with me as he worked, and so I had no knowledge on anything at all, really. I didn't even know how to read or count. I later knew that the Rc cells were specifically adapting to my genetics and biology, to perfectly integrate to me in a way that an implanted organ never would naturally.

The second implantation was different. As I already was a ghoul, my body reacted differently. Instead of integrating the Rc cells into my body, my body took them and destroyed them, breaking them down into their most base components and then rebuilding them as my own Rc cells, making my base ghoul abilities stronger and raising my Rc cell count to a number far above the majority of ghouls my size and age. I gradually became aware of a second Kagune held in a kakuhou above my shoulder blades, one more light and responsive than my first. It's not a sensation that can be compared to things that humans experience, but that's a fairly good description of what it was like to become aware of my second Kagune. Then the new Rc cells bonded to my nervous system and musculature, strengthening my fast twitch muscles and neural conduction speed beyond normal levels just like an Ukaku did for all of their hosts. Then came another pain, one focused on my forehead, somewhere that had acted normally my entire life, relatively speaking. To me it had only been memorable because of the way that the scar infuriated Kanou in its inexplicable presence. My Rc cells were focusing… something onto a presence within the scar, which was starting to feel like a piece of paper holding back water. Occasionally glimpses of memories would flash through the barrier as it struggled to hold whatever it was back from me. They were various and diverse, some of them taking place in a muddy, dirty environment as a man waved a staff and a knife over a screaming man surrounded by steaming cauldrons, candles, and complicated circular formations drawn in blood, and some of them were of a man living in fear among towering buildings and vast crowds of delicious smelling humans. Some of it was abstract knowledge. How to count to ten. How to use a lock on a door. How to find your way through a bustling cityscape. How to find your way from city to city in Japan using the stars. Then, the "paper" ripped and disintegrated, and a torrent of knowledge flooded my mind, reducing me to a vegetable-like state as my mind and Rc cells worked in concert to integrate the influx of knowledge. I barely knew anything-the consequence of living in a lab with only an insane scientist to speak with-so my mind was weak compared to the memories being implanted into my consciousness. Luckily for me, my Rc cells handled the process flawlessly. It wasn't something that a human would likely survive. My mind was kept in a trance not unlike deep meditation, the memories filtering through and into me little by little.

Over the course of the few days that it took for me to completely adapt to my second Kagune, I had gained all of the memories and knowledge of the ghoul that my Ukaku kakuhou had come from, and a very, very select set of memories intentionally left behind by the Dark Wizard that had created ghouls thousands of years ago. It made a stark difference in my mind, suddenly having the memories of men 40 and 120 years into their lives. But the thing that I was concerned with was the fact that I knew that I could escape. Not much else meant anything to me at the time.

Kagune and Quinque steel were incredibly resistant to magic, as Rc cells were specifically made to absorb any magic that comes in direct contact with them and use the magic as life force. It was this that actually forced ghouls to eat other humans to survive, as they needed the magic in their meals' Rc cells to continue to survive because normal ghouls didn't have any magic of their own. A ghoul could survive for years off of a single Wizard meal because of the sheer amount of magic in a Wizard compared to the relatively nonexistent amount in normal humans. But I digress. Quinque steel can only be damaged by extremely powerful magic beyond what the Rc cells can absorb, or the incredible physical power of ghoul physiology. The loophole is that they don't prevent magic from happening _around_ them. Because of this, I could perform magic even if I was shackled with Quinque steel. However, I wanted to indulge one last bit of vindictiveness before I escaped. It wasn't something I would've ever wanted to do before, but the memories that I'd absorbed had steamrolled over the weak, twisted parody of a personality that I used to have. The memories that I had made me a completely different person from who I used to be. It also gave me the ability to plan, so I waited until Kanou had come back to see how I'd adapted to my new kakuhou, and played dead. I played dead very, very well. I had a magical core, and a high count of Rc cells, I didn't need to breathe if I didn't want to. All ghouls needed to survive was for their Rc cells to survive, and Rc cells only needed magic to survive. "Ghoul" was the right word for the dark creature I'd become, an undead creature surviving by feeding off of the living. A small trickle of magic was devoured by my Rc cells as they acted like tiny carbon scrubbers, artificially keeping my blood full of fresh oxygen using a little bit of magical power as fuel for the process. They acted kind of like nanomachines programmed to keep my body in perfect condition.

Kanou, the mad idiot, approached me, prodding me with blades and the like as he got steadily closer and more hysterical with disappointment. He was convinced that the Ukaku that he'd implanted into me and my impressive immune system had battled it out and killed me in the process. It was a reasonable guess, ghouls ate human and ghoul tissue, and organs counted as tissue. Both of my kakuhou might've eaten each other to death, so to speak. I let him think that was what happened, until he was looking straight into my glazed eyes from a few inches away. He was so disappointed, and broken hearted. In his eagerness and in his frustration, he'd "killed" his favorite specimen. He was looking at me like a dog that had shit on his carpet, because of course it was my fault that I'd died.

I snapped my head forward and bit into his arm, making him yelp in shocked pain. My teeth sank deep into Kanou's soft flesh, and as Kanou's blood hit my tongue I was hit by a torrent of memories. The first time I'd absorbed memories I was taking in so much new information that my mind was overwhelmed. Now, my psyche was much stronger, and it weathered the storm. It didn't strain my mind to gain memories carrying knowledge I already knew, so the strain of integrating Kanou's memories came primarily from Kanou's extensive studies in the field of biology. I wasn't forced into a coma, at least, but the whole thing still gave me a horrific migraine. I could also literally feel as the new memories caused my personality to shift again. It was like having ghostly fingers rearranging my brain. It wasn't far off from the truth, my Rc cells were forcing my neurons into new patterns and essentially burning Kanou's memories onto my brain.

Then, without letting Kanou recover and do something annoying like sedating me, I did something stupid and desperate. The memories that I'd gained from the creator of all ghouls was incredibly specific, meant for any magicals that appeared in the ghoul population so they'd have a way of carrying on the "legacy" of said creator. It gave me a very, very general idea of what magic was capable of, and a very, very general idea of magical civilization. I escaped Kanou by using one ability that I knew for sure all magicals were capable of.

I magically teleported out of the lab. Now normally, wizards gain the magical strength to cast spells once they've hit puberty and go through their first magical maturity ending somewhere in the 13th year of their life. I was still going through said magical maturity, and I tried to use magic that can be draining for Wizards even after going through their second maturity at 21 and gaining the full potential of their magical ability. Magical overdraw has crippling aftereffects and a very real chance of killing the wizard involved, but I was desperate. The memories I'd stolen from the ghoul and Kanou were of a world I'd never seen. For the first time, I knew of a life I could've had outside of captivity.

 _I wanted it._

I vanished from the lab with a pop, and after experiencing a sensation not unlike being put through a woodchipper reappeared in an alley as a wad of shredded flesh, splattering over the buildings and ground around me like a popped paint balloon. My magic _screamed_ in protest at its first use, and the brutal overworking it had received. I had overused my magic to the point that my body's vitality was being cannibalized to refill my magical core by my Rc cells just to keep my alive. In spite of that, I celebrated the fact that I'd accomplished a magical feat that no one my age was ever supposed to be capable of. Well, I celebrated as much as my sluggish mind allowed considering the fact that I didn't actually have a brain at the time... It took me several minutes to regenerate with my flagging magic struggling to respond to my Rc cells' calls for sustenance, which for someone with both magic and a Rinkaku Kagune is a shockingly long time. I was naked, because Kanou never saw the need to give me any. I pulled a ragged trash bag from the side of the alley, and shook it a bit to get the worst of the filth off of it. I wrapped it around my waist to preserve my modesty. Giddy and overwhelmed, I stumbled through the 20th ward of Kakurega, the ghoul capital of the world, the memories of the three men I'd gained helping me walk for the first time of my life. My legs wobbled weakly as I strained their muscles for the first time ever, and my balance was… questionable. I was only able to stand upright because of ghouls' superior physiology. It's easy to stay standing when the raw strength of your legs can bend solid metal and crush concrete. My magic wailed in the back of my mind like a living thing, weakening rapidly as my body started failing to sustain it, and my stomach panged with hunger. An overpowering urge fell onto my bloodlust-addled mind, and I followed blindly like a lamb. I lifted my head and sniffed, catching the scent of something enticing on the wind.

I wandered through the back alleys of the 20th ward with a surety of purpose that I shouldn't have been able to muster in the condition I was in, but between my hunger, elation at my freedom, and the guiding presence in the back of my mind, I kept on my feet and moving. My feet were cut by the ground as I walked, but I barely felt the wounds. I didn't heal from the wounds, utterly exhausted as I was, but the pain barely even registered on the scale that I had. Cuts on my feet didn't compare to the time that Kanou had injected pure cobra venom into my upper arm.

I stumbled onto the scene of a young female ghoul eating a body in a back alley, and leapt forward to ravenously tear into it, ignoring the girl that I'd gone past. I ate a lot more than I should have. I'd never eaten anything before, and I probably ate close to ten pounds of flesh in a matter of minutes. I was spattered by gore, but that didn't matter to me in my desperation to get the next delicious bite past my lips and down my throat. I didn't notice as the man's memories were filed away into my mind. I don't even remember finishing eating, so I must've fallen unconscious mid-meal. I was lucky that I'd stumbled on the particular ghoul that I had. She took me to the place where I consider my life to have begun, when pretty much every other ghoul would've killed me on the spot for intruding on their meal.

The next thing I knew I was nestled into a bed as someone stroked my hair. I was laying face-up, and I could feel the blankets over me and actual clothes on me. The clothes felt rough and coarse against my skin, but that was more from me never having worn clothes before than the clothes being low-quality. Kanou had kept my hair cut at my jawbone, not caring to put in the effort to keep my appearance cultured but also not wanting it to disturb his access to my back. I was disturbed by the physical contact on an emotional level, but I didn't outwardly react because three lifetimes of memories won against my own, telling my mind that the feeling of having my hair stroked like that was something to take comfort in, not run away from.

I opened my eyes, and met the gaze of a surprised young girl with dark bluish hair that covered one of her eyes. We both froze, though she gained an embarrassed blush. She noticed that she still had her hand on my head, and she snatched it back, her blush intensifying. With no other way of knowing how to handle the situation, I fell back on the strategies that the ghoul I had memories from had used to pretend to be human.

"Hi," I managed, my mouth forming the words out of muscle memory gained from my meals, if awkwardly due to disuse. My throat awkwardly struggled to flex muscles in unfamiliar patterns. My voice was weak and squeaky, like I'd smoked eight cigarettes a day for half a century but kept the high pitch of a child. I eyed how close she was uncomfortably. My stolen memories could tell me whatever they wanted, but I was still scared of having anyone so close to me. Unbidden, my Kakugan activated. I could tell because an active Kakugan has much higher blood pressure than a normal eye, and as they activated I could feel the pressure build like a muscle flexing.

"Hi," her entire head turned red from embarrassment, the visible parts of her face showing demure shyness. She scooted back from the bed a little, putting some space between us. She looked a little confused that my ghoulish eyes were active. She also seemed to relax when she could confirm that I was a ghoul. I guess that even humans could be cannibals if they really wanted to. I relaxed a tiny little bit as the distance between us increased.

"Where am I?" I asked, shifting where I laid to test to see if I was restrained. With barely concealed excitement I realized that I was laying on a soft futon completely free. I didn't have any shackles or straps or anything holding me in place. I stretched out, marveling in the feeling of being able to bend my joints. "You can keep doing that if you want, it was… soothing." I didn't really think of what she had been doing as soothing, but Kanou knew psychology, and… well, facing your fears was one of the best way of overcoming them and I couldn't truly be free if I was always going to be terrified of being in the same room as other people.

Also, I only realized how strange what I said was afterwards. Just because I had a lot of memories didn't mean that I actually had social skills. My memories were like having a video guidebook in my head, I didn't just magically know everything. Ha, I didn't even mean to make that pun.

Her eye twitched, and she slammed an aggressive and flat expression on her face in response to my attitude. I wasn't fooled by the gruff front, not after what she'd just done.

"This is Anteiku," she explained, as if that was supposed to explain everything. My thoughts raced through all of my combined memories, but I found no mention of an "Anteiku". The ghoul that had donated my Ukaku had lived in the far eastern reaches of the city, and he never left. So this "Anteiku" had to have been in the western side.

"I have no idea where that is," I responded, running my eyes over the room. It was simple, with the appearance of a guest room. The girl blinked in surprise. Anteiku must have been fairly well-known if she was that surprised that I'd never heard of the place.

"It's a coffee shop. We help ghouls stay hidden from the CCG and give them food if they can't get it safely themselves. We're the primary ghoul power in the 20th ward," she explained. I nodded thoughtfully. Processing the information. I had no reason to trust them, but if they were in the 20th ward and were the primary power there then they could keep me safe from the CCG if I managed to manipulate them into caring for me.

"What's your name?" I asked, tilting my head curiously.

"Kirishima Touka, what's yours?" she countered. I took a moment to think.

"Actually I don't know. The only name I've known was Subject Zero," I told her, not noticing the look of horror that flashed over her face as I pondered the subject with a frightening level of detachment.

"You've been in a dove's lab? How are you alive? How did you escape?" she gushed, making a leap of logic and looking me over more critically, looking for tracking devices or signs of subterfuge. It only occurred to me then that my situation would probably be horrifying to the three people I'd stolen memories from. Two people, actually, Kanou wouldn't care for obvious reasons.

"Oh, I'm alive because I'm really good at not dying," I told her. I had no idea how else to explain it, "And how I escaped is a secret that I won't tell. Gotta keep a trump card and all," I shrugged with a small cynical smirk, all of the memories I have singing in approval of my actions. Kanou's medical experience was throwing fits at my mental condition, and how it had rapidly changed to a bold and colorful demeanor since I gained others' memories, but I felt… complete in a way that I never had before, so I wasn't worried despite what psychology was telling me. A day ago, or however long I'd been unconscious, I was a lab rat with no personality and no ability to function independently at all. The extreme changes that so many memories brought to me were _positive_ changes, I couldn't help but like them.

Touka gave me a glare at my lighthearted wording, however. She bopped me on the head frustratedly, her fist making a bruise that healed in less than a second.

"Brat," she sighed, "so how'd you end up intruding on my meal?"

"That was you huh? Sorry about that, actually, I didn't mean to be rude or anything but I desperately needed an intake of fresh Rc cells and, well, the food was there," I sat up and looked her in the eye sheepishly. I was short for my age, and she was 17 or so, so she was much taller than me, even though we were both sitting on the futon. I had to tilt my head backwards to look her in the eye.

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine, I can never eat a whole body in one sitting anyway," she shrugged. "And what do you mean about fresh Rc cells?" her one visible eyebrow rose curiously.

"Oh, you know how I was in a lab?" I asked, making her nod. "Well I can gain the memories of the Rc cells I eat, and I bit a chunk out of the lead scientist at the lab, so I've got a bunch of memories about studying ghouls in my head. And the memories of the guy you were eating, too. He was a cashier at a hardware store." Her jaw actually dropped in shock, her aggressive persona utterly shattered by my declaration.

"That's… useful," she managed. I assumed that she was just trying to figure out if I was lying or not. I swung my legs over the side of the futon, and stood up shakily, my legs unused to actually supporting my weight. I could remember walking, but remembering and actually doing are different, slightly. If you have the instruction manual to build a car, you could build it if you needed to. However you don't really know how to build it until you've actually gone through the experience once or twice. It didn't help that the memories I'd stolen were also from people with vastly different body types from mine. Being short sucks. I turned back to the girl, who was successfully putting her aggressive front back on.

"So, care to show me around? And thanks for the clothes," I asked. I was wearing a simple T-shirt, jeans, and white socks. Not the most glamorous out there but given the fact that they were the first things I'd ever worn in my life I could cut them some slack. They felt coarse against my skin, but I knew that would pass after a while.

"Sure," she nodded, still off-put by my previous announcement, and deciding whether to believe me or not. She stood up, making her even more tall compared to me, and led me through the door and into a hallway, taking me by the shoulder with a gently hand. "These are the guest rooms and where the manager lives," she pointed out simply to the other doors along the hallway. She took me down the hallway and after a short journey down the stairs we emerged into a coffee shop in the early hours of the morning, before the normal customers could arrive. Behind the counter was an old man that suspiciously reminded me of Kanou, and two other waiters.

"Oh, hello, it's good to see you awake," the old man smiled gently at me, making my hackles raise defensively. All of the others noticed this. "Ah, I need to go collect this week's merchandise, why don't you get him introduced to the others," he suggested to Touka, taking off his apron and leaving to give me space. I felt a bit of gratitude shine through my distrust.

"This is it. We operate under a front as a coffee shop," Touka said gruffly.

"Cool, ironic too, coffee shops are normally hubs of gossip and yet you guys are still going strong and staying hidden from the doves," I smirked, speech coming to me increasingly easily as I adapted my memories of speech to my childish mouth.

"And what's your name, little one?" The man now behind the counter asked with a warm smile.

"Calle me…" I thought about it for a moment, "call me Shinichi." I told them. First Son. An apt name for the first of a species of immortals.

"Well, Shinichi," Touka sighed "welcome to Anteiku."

And so I met the peace loving ghouls of the 20th ward, and met someone that would help define me as a person for the rest of my life.

Old man Yoshimura was quick to earn my trust, or at least as much of my trust as I was willing to give to an older man with white hair. He was nothing like Kanou once you got past the way he looked and his gentle demeanor. Yoshimura was almost repulsively pacifistic, though in combat he was ruthless. I did appreciate the strength and versatility of his Kagune, however, as my Ukaku was hard to use in close combat, but he could use his at any range. I pretty much ignored the others, I had better things to do than get to meet a few boring people, but I did quickly become friends with Touka. I had a particularly dark sense of humor due to my… upbringing, and the violent memories from Kanou and the ghoul that became my Ukaku, which appealed to her aggressiveness, and she fell to the gender-wide weakness of all girls that is a Kawaii young child, while I appreciated her dry humor and how she didn't pity or coddle me.

I cut my hair myself, and ended up making it a shaggy mess that fell around my head like a mane, and I stayed in a guest room on Anteiku's second floor with the bed next to the window for an easy escape. It wasn't hard to pick up the skills I needed to live independently when every time I ate I gained another lifetime of memories, so I was pretty much spending all my time by myself in my room thinking if I wasn't talking to Touka. The moment she saw the mess I made of my hair she dragged me off to a real stylist and I got my haircut in a half-shaved rocker style, though with how messy and rebellious my black hair acted the rest stuck up in a wild mess around the right side of my head and I loved it. It looked kind of like the Uta guy that Touka took me to to get my mask, if you made his hair stick out in every direction and spike all over the place. Touka also took me to get me more clothes, and I stuck with looser pants and jackets, flat-bottomed shoes, and everything in dark colors. I'd never be caught in public without at least a minimum amount of black and grey. Lighter colors just… felt wrong. They were too happy for my tastes.

One of my top priorities, though, was testing the knowledge left behind by the Dark Wizard that created ghouls. I was not willing to implicitly trust my ability to absorb memories on risky matters until I had proof. The wizard's name was Ichirou Shuu, and he created ghouls in a search for immortality and invincibility. He created Rc cells and gave them magical abilities that he hoped would add together to make him unkillable and unstoppable. They would live off a wizard's magic, and in return strengthen the wizard's body and strengthen his magic many times its natural potential, and give him a weapon in the form of a Kagune that couldn't be defended against by any magical or mundane means. He made the mistake of testing them on muggles and accidentally creating the race of ghouls, the first group of which ate him in the classic form of "mad scientist eaten/killed by his own creation."

What I was concerned with was the ability of some ghouls to gain a stronger form for their Kagune known as a Kakuja. As a ghoul, a creature hunted by every country in the world with extreme prejudice, I needed to have the raw combat ability to keep myself safe, and Kakuja were all overwhelmingly powerful, and more importantly _adaptable_. I'm a Chimaera ghoul, so I'm adaptable under normal conditions, but neither of my Kagune were well suited to defense, and a Kakuja form could solve that problem. The problem with Kakuja was that until my Rc cells finished mutating I'd lose my sanity the moment I entered my incomplete Kakuja form. Therefore, I was planning on eating a diet purely consisting of other ghouls until my Kakuja form was complete before I even considered transforming to take a look at it.

Anyways, I tested the memories of Ichirou, comparing his research to the ghouls I met (and ate). I mostly did this by watching them hunt for a few days, seeing Kagune and the like in action, simple stuff, and seeing that Ichirou's knowledge was correct, I put together my plan of eating only ghouls until I ascended, so to speak.

The first time I tried doing so began with me staring a ghoul in the face in the 11th ward.

"Hello, little one," he greeted me with a wicked smile, "my aren't you cute."

"And you're ugly," I didn't miss a beat. I wasn't lying either. The guy was fat as hell, with a face that belonged on a mountain troll. He snarled.

"You're going to pay for that, brat," he stepped forward, his Koukaku emerging from his back and forming a hammer around his right fist. "I'm going to slurp up what's left of you."

"Yeah, not interested," I sighed, taking a step back.

"Oh, he thinks he has a choice," the fatty cackled, and he lunged for me. My Rinkaku erupted from my back, all three of them, and working together flung the guy up and over me, and all the way out into the street. My Rinkaku was a work of art, if I do say so myself. It wasn't a flat blade like most were, and it wasn't smooth like most were either. It was like three tails that had been mostly flattened, with spiked scales like a lizard's tail or shark skin. The tip widened into large barbed structure kind of like a flat pine tree, it added weight to the end of my tail and gave it's blows just a little more impact. Combined, I had limbs that were just as good at slicing as other Rinkaku, but were actually less likely to be cut off like others because the scales resisted damage. They mitigated the worst weakness of Rinkaku to a degree just with how they were shaped. I leapt up over the ghoul in a mirror image of the move he tried, but my Rinkaku was faster, and I stabbed through the back of his skull before he could defend. I was far more in tune with my Kagune then I was with my actual limbs, but whether that had to do with my unique nature or because they were integral to my magic I had no idea. I looked up and saw the entire street staring at me and the other ghouls Kagune, having a hard time comprehending that two ghouls would fight, and that one would eat another. It's a logical progression, eating humans to eating other ghouls, but humans aren't exactly known for noticing things unless they're right in front of their face.

"Oh, don't mind me," I said, my third Rinkaku limb cutting mouthfuls off the fatty as my other two stabbed through him and the barbs of my scales held him in place against the pavement. I unlatched my mask, a shiny metal creation imitating the fanged mouth of a serpent that could lock closed or unlock to let me eat through it, and I started to place the mouthfuls into my mouth, chewing the terrible-tasting meal thoroughly before swallowing. Several people screamed, but there were a few crazy or brave ones that were snapping photos of the child ghoul eating his own kind. There was a chance that Kanou could track me down through those pictures, but I could apparate away again in a pinch if I needed to, so I wasn't going to bother them. I doubted that even Kanou could come up with a way to block magical teleportation. I had eaten half of the ghoul, and had the guy's kakuhou in my hand when I heard the doves approaching. Silently, I stood up and left, switching my active Rinkaku for my Ukaku, using the resulting speed boost to get away before the doves could arrive. They'd find nothing more than the body of a fat half-eaten ghoul.

"That wasn't even a fight," I heard a voice whine. I turned to see a small, female figure covered in bandages from head to toe and wearing a red hooded overcoat. Through the bandages on the person's face I saw a single Kakugan and a single normal eye. She was sitting on the edge of a building across from me, and wasn't in an aggressive posture in the slightest. Then again ghouls don't need to stand aggressively to fight, given their Kagune, but they generally had combat stances so the point stands.

"A half-ghoul?" I guessed, retracting my Kagune to show that I wasn't looking for a fight either.

"Ooooh, and you're perceptive too," she giggled, kicking her feet back and forth playfully underneath the fire escape she was sitting on, "you should join Aogiri Tree, we're a ghoul group and we can make you stronger."

"Oh, really? How many ghouls you have under your banner, and what rank?" I asked, feigning interest. I didn't need the help of other ghouls to get stronger. I had my abilities and my magic would start to be usable within the next year. She giggled at my serious tone, and humored me with an only slightly condescending tone.

"We have five ghouls above A rank, two SS ranks, and one SSS rank, and a big number of minions. You're only about an A rank but you're young, you've got a lot of po-ten-tial," she enunciated playfully.

"Tell you what, I'm working towards becoming a Kakuja. You have until then to convince me to join… Aogiri was it?" I offered her a bone, fully intending on never taking up her offers, but not willing to alienate what could possibly be a place to hide if I needed to. At the least the "minions" could be a decent source of Rc cells towards my Kakuja form in a pinch.

"I guess I'll just have to settle for that, hmm?" she laughed, "I'm Eto, I'll see you soon!" She waved, and then jumped off the roof, vanishing into the cityscape with an impressive amount of speed.

"Huh, looks like she might not have been lying when she said they've got a bunch of ghouls rank S and up," I said out loud, a habit that Ichirou had whenever he was alone that I inherited from the dark wizard along with his memories. I shook my head, clearing it of random thoughts, and walked away. My primary hunting grounds were in the 11th ward, which was so heavily infested with ghouls that you could find two in any crowd of people at any given time. It was easy to find one to snack on with such a large selection. The only downside of the area was that the CCG was constantly ready to swoop in at the faintest sign of trouble.

They were only a problem if it took too long to take down my prey. Or if it took too long for the rush of memories to filter in. It took less time to absorb the memories if I already knew most of the knowledge I was eating, or if I had a bunch of related knowledge already. I rarely got more that a faint dull ache when I ate memories anymore. I went hunting every day, and though I knew that ghouls didn't have to eat more than once or twice a month, I wanted to become a Kakuja, so I was overeating. One positive to being a ghoul is that you can't get fat from overeating. Yay.

Eto showed up every once in a while after that day to say hello. She seemed to get a kick out of my cynical yet cheerful personality, a combination of my understanding of just how bad the world can get (thank you Kanou and various ghouls' memories) but I was still cheerful, because I simply didn't care how bad everything was, it wasn't my problem. After my early childhood not even living as a ghoul in the same city as the CCG headquarters was all that bad.

I walked back to Anteiku, placing my mask into a kids backpack with a Kakugan and a mugshot of an investigator on it (I loved the irony), passing a CCG investigator not long after as the organization combed the area for the ghoul that'd been spotted. They'd never find me though, with Kanou's memories of how they operated I knew exactly how to get past them. Plus he had experience doing the same thing after he left them and started to do his more… questionable experiments. In essence I could get past the search net and look inconspicuous if I wanted to. It was a good thing that I wasn't messy when I ate, or I'd have a lot harder time escaping. Blood splattering the clothing of a child isn't very inconspicuous.

Anteiku was my… home, or as close to a home as I knew, considering I'd only been out of Kanou's labs for a few weeks. Old man Yoshimura had essentially given me one of the rooms on the second floor of the coffee shop, one they normally used to house ghouls running from the CCG, or ghouls running from cannibal ghouls in extreme cases. He thought a child like me shouldn't have to take care of itself. He did give me the freedom to leave if I wanted to, after I demonstrated my ability to use my Kagune. I was a lot more in tune with the glowing red limbs than most ghouls are (I could control Rc cells with a high level of precision because of my magic, was my guess), so he had confidence in my ability to take care of myself in a pinch. Yoshimura was a cool guy, and even though I kind of looked down on him for it and he still creeped me out with his kindly grandfather mannerisms I had to respect his commitment to never kill anything, either in combat or for food. I wasn't as… altruistic. I loved fighting and the freedom of combat, the satisfaction of seizing control of a fight and utterly dominating my foe, it was an unhealthy addiction that I'd fallen right into after my first taste of victory but after ten years in captivity I couldn't resist.

I walked right into the coffee shop, kicking the door open in a completely immature act of rebelliousness. A few of the human patrons that were in the shop for a late night cup of coffee jumped from their seats. The ghouls didn't, they'd heard my footsteps before I even made it to the door. I walked through the room, and dropped my backpack at the foot of the stairs to the top floor.

"Hey, Touka, would you mind whipping up a cappuccino?" I called, heading for an unused table. The humans in the store eyed me curiously, finding it strange to see someone as young as me drinking coffee.

"Yeah, yeah," Touka grumbled under her breath, quiet enough that only ghouls could hear it. I tapped my fingers on the table as I waited, thinking about the hunt of the day. The first time I'd fought another ghoul it was only due to my freakish regeneration that I survived. Yeah, I should mention that even for a ghoul my ability to regenerate was awe-inspiring. The first guy I tried to eat was a Bikaku, and I hadn't learned to use my Ukaku effectively so I was at a severe disadvantage. They guy had cut me in half, and started eating my lower body only to get sliced to pieces by my Rinkaku only a handful of seconds later as my lower body completely regenerated. I had to steal a pair of pants to get home. Now, after two weeks of combat I'd synced up with my Kagune and could use to help me move around, fight, and all that stuff. I knew that it was unusually fast, but I'd been eating the Rc cells of experienced ghouls from the most chaotic ward in the city, so I had a huge number of memories of using a Kagune in all kinds of ways. I adjusted quickly.

"Here you are," Touka set my coffee cup down in front of me, acting demure in front of the humans.

"Thanks, Tou-chan," I smiled at her, inwardly laughing at the way her eye twitched subtly at the nickname. I woman working at a laptop a few tables down smiled at the scene, thinking that I was an innocent kid using a cute name for a shy, timid girl. If she only knew. Touka walked away, and I took a sip of the coffee. I sighed in contentment, no coffee in any of the memories I'd gained compared, no matter if the memories were from a human or a ghoul, none of them came close to equalling the coffee of Anteiku. I looked out the windows, watching the moon motionlessly fall towards the horizon. I sipped my coffee, thinking about myself. I'd grown up in a lab, and then all of a sudden I'm free and then two weeks later I'm acting just like anyone else. And I _noticed_ that I was acting like everyone else. Ichirou had delved into mind magic a bit in the knowledge he'd left behind, and Kanou knew the basics of psychology, but I still had no insight into my mental condition. It was… disturbing, suddenly thinking in an entirely different way and having no explanation. Yes, I was happy, but as the days passed it made me worry how often it could happen. It reminded me of the times that Kanou would get a new idea and switch around how he would test me in an attempt to glimpse at the source of my endurance, for one. I also didn't want to finally gain my freedom only to be enslaved to a constantly changing personality. I was just glad that I'd found Anteiku, the place was quickly growing on me and I could compare my personality to theirs if I needed to see if I was still sane. I was pretty sure I was.

When I finished with my coffee I took it back to the bar, Irina (a pretty older waitress) nodding thankfully as I did. I noticed that Touka was gone, meaning that her shift was over. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs, picked up my backpack, and went up the stairs one at a time, losing myself in my thoughts. I was going over my fight from earlier, thinking about the fatty I'd eaten. Frankly I wouldn't have beaten him if my body's raw power and speed hadn't started to climb the more I ate other ghouls. I assumed it was a sign of the start of becoming a kakuja. However I was… clumsy, for the lack of a better word. I still wasn't entirely used to actually moving with my arms and legs, walking, fighting, and generally doing more than lay strapped to a table, and it was only my superior physical abilities, and proficiency with my versatile pair of Kagune that kept me alive through all of the fights I'd gotten myself into for the past several days. I turned and went through a door on my left.

I froze when I realized that the room was in an entirely different layout from mine. It had the futon on the wrong side of the room, it had a desk with a lamp on it, and it had a shelf filled with CDs and other digital storage devices. Against the near wall was a soundboard with multiple headphones laying on it haphazardly. In the middle of the room sitting on the edge of her bed and about to take her shoes off was Touka, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights.

"I'm sorry, wasn't paying attention to where I was going," I broke the silence quickly. Her eye twitched.

"You're lucky you didn't barge in here a few minutes later," she almost growled. I gulped, realizing that she was about to change out of her work uniform.

"Uh, yeah, but aren't I a little too young for you to be concerned about stuff like that around me?" I pulled an innocent look out of my ass.

"You're not a child, not with the way you act, brat, I saw you checking out that blonde girl downstairs" she growled, kicking off her shoes and falling backwards onto her bed, sighing deeply. Yeah, having decades of memories as adult men and women kind of replaced the need for "the Talk." "So you gonna leave, or you gonna keep bothering me until I make you leave?" I smiled sheepishly, and turned away. I hesitated.

"What is it?" she snapped.

"Well… nevermind," I lost my nerve at her tone. Funny how I could kill and eat someone ten times my size and hurl back snappy comebacks but the moment I faced down Touka I folded like wet paper.

"No, you're gonna tell me what's wrong," she sat up irritably.

"Well… I just saw how much music you've got," I pointed to the shelf, virtually all the CDs were music, either albums or other collections of songs, "and… I've never heard music before. Not through my own ears." Touka eyed me carefully, her irritation slowly easing away.

"How long were you in that dove lab?" She finally asked.

"As long as I can remember," I told her simply, not wanting to skirt the issue and alienate the first person to show me kindness in my entire life. Touka's eyes stared at me for a few moments.

"What do you want to hear?" she asked, standing up. She loosened her tie from around her neck and undid the buttons on her vest, but left the rest of her uniform untouched. She started pointing to different parts of the shelf. "I've got a big collection of rock, whether you want heavy stuff or more alternative stuff, and I've got pretty much everything else. If you ask to hear classical or country though, you're getting thrown out the window." I kept my relief at her not delving deeper into my past hidden, and walked up next to her, leaning my head over so it rested against her just under her elbow.

"What's your favorite?" I suggested, not having any opinions about music. The memories I'd eaten didn't count, as they were from another person listening, I might not like the same songs if I actually heard them myself. Touka scoffed.

"No real music enthusiast has a single favorite," she declared haughtily, "whatever I'll just play what's already in the thing." She reached over the soundboard and handed me one of the headphones. I slipped the pair over my ears, and Touka laughed. "You look like mickey mouse with those on your tiny head," she snickered. I glared at her as she put her own headphones on. She flipped a switch on the soundboard, and when the lights came on she pressed a button. I faintly heard music through the headphones. "Never turn your speakers on or off with the volume up high, it damages them," she explained, raising the volume steadily with a dial. The music got louder, and I started to understand the lyrics. Kanou was fluent in five languages.

New blood joins this earth,

And quickly he's subdued.

Through constant pained disgrace

The young boy learns their rules

"Metallica, one of the most famous heavy metal bands. This is The Unforgiven, one of their most famous songs," she told me. I started bobbing my head to the music hesitatingly. I liked it. The… bloody violent ghoulish part of me loved the aggressiveness, but the story in the lyrics hit me kind of hard.

"I like it," I still told Touka, who had already guessed the reason behind my discomfort, and had hit the skip button. Immediately the song switched to a different, less violent and gentler song. Mama Said, Touka told me. I was able to listen to it without flashbacks, and I found that I really liked it. Touka smiled at me, as I closed my eyes and listened. She pulled her headphones off and stepped away, letting me listen on my own.

When the song ended she wordlessly switched the disk in the soundboard's CD dock with a different one, and I soon heard the sound of The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing through the headphones. I kept my eyes closed to hide the tears that formed as I heard music for the first time.

"Thank you," I said earnestly, my voice quiet. She ruffled my hair in response, not verbally answering so she didn't disturb the music.

That night Touka stayed up with me late into the night, introducing me to music. Collecting music seemed to be her hobby, though she apparently was embarrassed about talking about it in public. When I asked her why she was fine talking about it with me, she blushed, and admitted that I reminded her of her little brother and she liked seeing me enjoy her music as much as she did. I didn't ask her about her brother, because the grimace that accompanied her mention of him was spectacular. I figured there was some bad memories going on and I didn't really know her that well, so I didn't bring him up.

In the morning, she grumbled about me keeping her up as she struggled to get to school through her exhaustion while I snickered good naturedly. That night seemed to have broken the ice between us, and it was just a few days before we were acting like old friends. Every afternoon she'd find me and drag me to some new place or show me something new, determined to make up for the years I'd spent locked up in a lab. She was shocked at how similar our interests were. We both loved music, fantasy literature, hated painting and sculpting, and we both had vicious senses of humor. However while I was an incurable adrenaline junky, she got somewhat nervous at times, due to how she wanted to stay out of the spotlight (ghoul, you know). I found out through a bit of guesswork and well-timed questions that she had a phobia of birds after she was attacked by one when she was younger. I told her that I guessed that I had a phobia of grandfatherly people, after Kanou, and we discussed psychology for a bit. We both had highly cynical views of society as a whole, with her living a life in hiding and me living a life under the "tender care" of a well-respected man. In fact, we were good enough friends a few weeks after that first night that I asked if she wanted to go hunting with me.

I gave her the entire explanation of how I was trying to become a kakuja by consuming other ghouls, and driving the CCG up the wall trying to figure me out at the same time. She was obviously highly against the entire idea at first, but eventually I got her to at least understand my reasoning and agree to consider doing so herself. I wanted my first friend to be able to defend herself.

"Well, I guess this is my cue," I said, walking towards the edge of the building we were standing on top of in the 11th ward. Both of us were wearing masks. Speaking of which, I upgraded mine, carving symmetrical patterns into it out of nordic runes with the keen edge of my Rinkaku. Below us was a ghoul stalking a young girl. Apparently the guy liked to eat until he was full from the top down, and… satisfy his other urges afterwards on what was left. I shudder to this day just thinking about the guy. My Ukaku sprouted from my back in a pale blue-white burst. Four short coulds of Rc cells wavered behind me in an X shape, angled away from my back. They crystallized, forming four sharp horns centered on the point just below where my neck met my back. They were about a foot and a half long each, long enough to be clearly visible from the front. Behind me, Touka released her own Kagune, slipping her rabbit mask onto her face. She eyed my Kagune with part curiosity, part disapproval at its small size. Her huge glowing wing was ten times the size of my Kagune.

"So what's the plan, brat? Run in and hope to kill the guy before he fights back?" she asked, eyeing the Koukaku the ghoul below us had produced, a thick cleaver-like blade that jutted from his back like an oversized shark fin. "You do realize that we're inherently at a disadvantage against a Koukaku."

"Yeah, actually, I've got a surprise that'll finish the fight all at once, I'm just trying to get some practice with my Ukaku a bit, I can't use it too well yet," I sighed. This was the first time she'd seen either of my Kagune, and I hadn't told her I was a chimaera yet. I shook my head, and jumped off the building, falling three stories and landing easily on my feet behind the ghoul. Ah, the joys of being a superhuman creature of darkness. The ghoul whipped around, his Kagune bisecting the girl he was after without him noticing. She whimpered and died. He saw me standing there, and growled. He was drooling and panting like a dog.

"Who the hell're you? This is my turf, brat. Scram before I gut you like a teddy bear," he growled. I blinked at the strange threat.

"Yeah… fuck you," I flipped him off, and I fired my Kagune at him.

Now normally Ukaku kagune form a wing-like structure that can crystallize in a feather-like pattern and launch each "feather" as a bladed projectile at the speed of a fastball. My Kagune was small, and formed smooth crystals that didn't look like wings at all. Further each of my projectiles were tiny, barely a tenth the size of a normal Ukaku shard and only as big as the tip of my thumb in width. However my Kagune made up for this deficiency in both the size of its barrages and its impact strength with the sheer speed that it shot each shard at the ghoul. Getting peppered by a collection of tiny razor-sharp crystals moving at speeds comparable to Mach one was just as dangerous as getting hit by a cloud of crystals that could cut your hand off in one blow with a lucky shot.

Needless to say, the shards that he didn't manage to block by quickly wrapping his Kagune around himself like a bat sliced straight through skin, flesh, cartilage, and carved gouges into his bones. His slow regeneration started, pushing the shards out of his body, and he growled.

"You're dead," he announced, and he charged. I stepped back, sending a second wave of shards at him. These he all blocked with the huge shield that was his butcher-knife Kagune. I weaved to the side, kicking off the ground and jumping between the buildings above his head, twisting to give my Kagune a better shot from my back as I peppered him with Ukaku shards. Touka ambushed him from behind, kicking him in the head. The guy didn't have anything valuable there, so he recovered from the blow quickly enough to almost hit her with his Kagune as she retreated. He scowled as he whipped his Kagune back to block the barrage I'd tried to slip in during his distraction.

Touka charged sideways, sending her own flurry of sharp projectiles at him, forcing the ghoul to dodge. He clipped me with the tip of his Kagune as he moved, as I hadn't seen his dodge coming and let myself get in range. Blood sprayed from my leg as everything below my knee detached. I crashed into the wall of the building I was headed for, and I fell to the ground.

"Shin!" Touka cried, rushing forward and trying to hold the ghoul off. She couldn't get close to him as he flailed his Kagune around himself, cutting gouges in the concrete around him. Then, all of a sudden my Rinkaku erupted from my back and pierced straight through his Kagune and into his brain, heart, and throat, separating his head from his body. Bloody red tendrils stretched from my leg, both the part attached and the part that wasn't, and as Touka watched my leg reattached itself in less than a second, and the wound disappeared completely in a handful more. She looked between my leg, the ghoul, my Ukaku, and my three Kagune that were obviously Rinkaku.

"Surprise," I said snickered.

"Asshole," she punched me in the head. I wasn't hurt. "So you let yourself get hurt because you knew your regeneration could handle it? That's a kinda risky fighting style," she commented, sounding uncomfortable with how I hadn't even flinched from the pain of having my leg sliced off.

"Actually no," I blushed underneath my mask, kicking the ground sheepishly, "I've been winning my fights by surprising my opponent with whichever Kagune I don't use first. Except for one fatty that was so weak it was embarrassing. It only took my Rinkaku to beat him." Touka sighed.

"So you don't actually know how to fight," she guessed, giving me a halfhearted glare through her mask. Since I couldn't actually see her face through the thing it didn't intimidate me at all.

"Well I know _how_ to fight, I've got lots of memories from all the ghouls I've eaten, but I don't know how to fight as _me_ , and that's the problem. And I don't have the fighting experience either. I just get the muscle memory, and ghouls don't usually fight with anything other than their Kagune, or at least they don't here, so the muscle memory's mostly useless," I defended myself.

"Okay you're getting lessons in fighting every day from now on," she sighed, grumbling about overconfident idiots under her breath, which I of course heard because I was a ghoul and a mere five feet away from her. I undid the latch on my mask and started to eat the ghoul as she bit into the girl that the guy had been hunting and accidentally killed.

Waste not want not, after all.

"So anyways, you're a chimaera? Ukaku and Rinkaku, huh?" she spoke up between bites.

"Yeah, not by birth though," I shrugged, going through my usual ritual of having my Rinkaku cut the ghoul into bite-sized pieces for me to eat cleanly without making a mess of myself.

"Lab, huh?" She guessed.

"Lab," I confirmed, taking another bite of the ghoul's somewhat small amount of muscle.

"Which one were you born with, then?" She asked curiously after a moment.

"... neither," I decided to tell her the truth. She froze, and turned to me.

"You're an artificial ghoul?" she gasped out, "how the hell did you survive something like that? You'd have to have kakuhou implanted in you, they should have eaten you alive!"

"I'm…" I trailed off, thinking about how much I wanted to reveal to her. "I'm different. I've been different my whole life, even before I ended up in a lab. My first memory is being stuck in an airtight shipping crate full of preservatives at temperatures well below freezing for days. I was an infant at the time. I'm… really resistant to dying, I guess you could say. I doubt any normal human could have two kakuhou implanted in them, but maybe someone compatible could have just one." I left out the fact that I knew I was different because of magic.

"That's interesting," a voice said from right next to us and we both yelped, jumping in the air from shock.

"Eto! Don't do that, dammit!" I yelled at the giggling female mummy.

"Who's this?" Touka demanded, still in a fighting stance.

"Some childish half-ghoul that wants me to join Aogiri Tree," I shrugged, going back to eating. Touka shifted her gaze to me, a strange look in her eye somewhere between resignation, hope, and hurt.

"Are you going to join?" she wondered quietly.

"No, I don't really want to join. They want to rule all of humanity. I don't really care enough about the issue," I told her, "So yeah, sorry Eto." I turned to the girly mummy with a cat-eared hood. Eto sighed, slumping on the fire escape she was sitting on.

"It's okay, I'll just keep trying until you do," she shrugged, kicking her legs underneath her alternately in a childish motion. I grunted, chewing through a bone. Touka looked relieved at my answer and pained at Eto's words. We all heard a feminine scream, and looked to the entrance of the alley to see a 30 year old man, who was thin and wiry and look about as masculine as Touka fall to the ground in a dead faint. Actually scratch that Touka was more masculine than he was, and she was hot as hell, not butch in the least. Moving on, the guy fainted where he was, which drew attention to the alley. We heard the murmur of approaching humans.

"Well, we should head back before the CCG gets a call," I suggested, and Touka nodded, giving Eto one last glance before jumping upwards towards the roof of the buildings around us. I waved lazily to the girlish half-ghoul, and did the same, activating my Ukaku to gain the agility boost to match Touka's jump.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Here's chapter 1, chapter 2 might be out in the next few days, maybe sooner because I'm really inspired at the moment.**_

 _ **And to respond to ShiroHollow96, thanks for the favorite and review btw, Zero has one Rinkaku, and one Ukaku Kagune, if you didn't figure that out from the better descriptions I gave in this chapter, sorry for the confusion. Yes, there will be pairings, but they won't show up for a bit, and this is a multi-crossover so there's a lot of plot out there. I won't give out spoilers, but yes Zero does interact with the Wizarding World in the future.**_

 _ **And on a miscellaneous note yes I know that in Canon there's nothing about Touka loving music. I put that into my story because I want her to be more than just the Bitchy Tsundere that she sort of was in Canon. THere will be OOCness. Spooky.**_

 _ **Thank all of you for taking time to read this crap, chapter 2's coming, same bat time, same bat channel**_

 _ **EDIT:**_

 _ **Hello everybody, I'm ALIVE. Kinda**_

 _ **Iv'e been fighting some really serious writers block since starting classes, so today I sat myself down and told myself I wouldn't leave my dorm until I'd written something I could post in some way. I plan on doing one or two more chapters of editing, and maybe tweaking the newer ones before going back to working on the new chapter.**_

 _ **Thanks for putting up with the wait!**_


	4. Chapter 2: Enter the Mukade

**Chapter 2**

"This is strange…" investigator Kureo Mado looked over the scene with an unsettling grin on his face.

"What is it?" Mado's partner Koutarou Amon asked uncomprehendingly.

"Take a look at the damage. You can see the wide cuts here from a Koukaku Kagune, presumably the ghoul body here," Mado pointed to the mess of slices on the ground, " And if you look around you can see smaller incisions characteristic of a pair of Ukaku Kagune that can be differentiated by the size of the cuts. However," he grinned madly, pointing to a few small, thin slices in the concrete around the dead ghoul's corpse, "if you look here you see cuts that could only be made by a Rinkaku. Now looking at the bite marks on both bodies you can tell that there were only two ghouls here, one eating the human and one eating the Koukaku ghoul. But that means the damage on site indicates an unaccounted for Kagune. If my guess is right, the ghoul that ate the Koukaku ghoul is a chimaera! I want to make a Quinque from it so badly!" Mado cackled. Amon looked at each of the areas in awe at Mado's expertise.

"So what are we going to call this ghoul?" Amon wondered, stepping around the blood soaked patches of concrete to get a better look at the Ukaku marks.

"Hmm," Mado stopped laughing, "there's been a ghoul that's been eating other ghouls almost every day here in the 11th ward, a child actually, he's on file as Manticore. He's famous for cutting his meal into bite sized pieces and keeping himself clean as he eats." Mado pointed to the ghoul corpse, which had clearly been diced into small cubes. Amon grimaced.

"A child?" he repeated.

"Yes, eight or nine at the youngest, twelve at the oldest. What a Kagune he must have to be able to live on a diet of ghouls…" Mado fantasized about Quinque. Amon simply ignored his partner's quirks. He'd gotten used to them over time.

XXXXXXX

"Touka! I've got something for you!" I called, kicking her door open. She yelped, whipping around to see me from where she was working on her homework for the school she was attending.

"You little shit!" she growled, glaring at me with her Kakugan active.

"Here," I placed the gift on the desk next to her, ignoring the glare completely. She glanced at it. I'd found a fairly expensive MP3 player on a ghoul I'd just hunted, so I thought I'd bring it to Touka. It was large, about the size of her palm, with a screen and buttons on the side. "I don't know how much memory it had, and the headphones were sliced into tiny pieces, but I thought you might like something to take your music around with you more," I shrugged. Her Kakugan faded into her normal eye as she sighed.

"Thanks," she resigned herself to my rebel antics, Ruffling my hair affectionately, she picked it up. "This is a pretty good model, it's got 32 Gigabytes of memory, and it's in good condition." She looked the gift over. "I'm pretty sure my headphones from the soundboard will work with this, so don't worry about those."

"Cool, happy to help. By the way, I wanted to go to the zoo today, would you mind taking me?" I wondered with my biggest puppy eyes. "When you're done with your homework," I quickly added. Touka tried to resist, but I had such big green eyes and she had a severe weakness for cute things.

"Fine," she grunted, turning away and going back to her homework. Old man Yoshimura had pretty much told her that she got paid time off any time I wanted to drag her off somewhere, he wanted me to have as much of a semblance of a real childhood as I could get. I think. He was hard to read sometimes. You get good at acting when you're a ghoul living in plain sight.

"Alright !" I cheered, just to irritate her, "I'll be in my room when you're done." I whipped around and walked out, leaving her door open behind me. I heard Touka slam it shut as I went to my room, and I snickered. My room had changed a bit since I became friends with Touka. First of all I found that I absolutely loved snakes, and I had snake plushies all over the place that I stole from here or there. I'd never seen a real snake though, which is why I wanted to go to the zoo. I also had stacks of music CDs against one wall, along with a CD player and a pair of headphones that Touka had leant to me until I got my own. I still had the bed by the window, however, and I still didn't feel completely safe in it.

The zoo I'd heard about was Ueno Zoo, the oldest zoo in Japan. It was in the 5th ward, and there weren't many ghouls there so we were pretty safe from being spotted by the CCG. It also had snakes. And lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.

It'd been about a month or so since I'd escaped from Kanou's lab, and I was starting to get used to actually being alive. I could walk around and fight without struggling to keep my balance, and I could talk without any difficulties. Touka still went hunting with me once or twice a week, but she decided she didn't want to go through the risk of becoming a Kakuja, so she went back to hunting mostly on her own. She pretty much still came with me a few times a week so she could spend time with me and get to see me fight with both my Kagune, though she'd never admit it out loud.

I listened to music for the majority of the next hour as Touka finished her homework. Luckily it was a saturday, so she didn't have classes. I was sitting with my eyes closed, so Touka kicked me in the leg to get my attention. I just turned off the CD player and jumped up, latching onto her back like a monkey.

"Let's go!" I cheered. She tried to shake me off irritably at first, but her efforts failed, and she wasn't trying all that hard in the first place.

The zoo was great. The first thing we went to see was the lions and tigers, because Touka wanted nothing to do with the birds near the entrance. I sat on her shoulders as she pointed out what she knew about the animals to me. I was starting to hit a growth spurt, so I'd gained an inch, but I was still small compared to her, and she was a ghoul, so she didn't have any trouble carrying me like that. She did have a bit of trouble being in the center of a crowd of humans, but I pilfered a pair of sunglasses from an unsuspecting target to solve that problem. I didn't have any trouble keeping my Kakugan dormant, with my level of control over my own Rc cells. The humans loved the sight of the girl carrying me, thinking us siblings. Of course they didn't approve of my style of dress with my black cargo pants, royal purple tank top, and my hairstyle, but I didn't care about them or their opinions.

We went past the bears, elephants, and monkeys, Touka giving me time to see them all as we did, and we went to the other side of the zoo, and stopped by the penguins and kangaroos. Touka kept telling me about the animals, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I already knew everything she was telling me. Kanou was a biologist.

We walked past the penguins and kangaroos, and I was suddenly hit by the sound of a few strange voices. I could literally feel my magic interpreting sounds and transforming it into a comprehensible form before letting me actually hear them. They sounded like smooth, raspy whispers. When we got closer I realized what I was hearing.

" _The foolish human brats are banging on the glass again. When will they realize that we don't care. Their sires and dames know, is it that incomprehensible to two-legs at their reduced age?"_ one voice asked.

" _Shut up,"_ another snapped, " _the brats might learn, but the next that come here won't have learned. It makes no difference."_

I looked and saw the most likely source. "Touka, get me closer," I asked her with a serious tone. Picking up on my curiosity and seriousness, she complied, fitting through the traffic and coming to a stop in front of the vivarium that contained the corn snakes.

" _Oh look, another little one come to gawk at us, like you don't have anything better to do with your life,"_ the snake on the left said sarcastically.

" _I don't actually, I came pretty much just to see you guys,"_ I hissed, shocking myself, Touka, and the snakes in the vivarium all at the same time. Beside me, a normal boy blinked in confusion.

" _A speaker!"_ the snake on the right hissed loudly, in the snake way of shouting.

" _Speaker?"_ I repeated, " _As in speak to snakes? That's not very original."_ I snarked at the thing. The normal boy started looking for his parents to tell them about the boy that could speak snake.

" _Ha! This one actually has a personality, unlike every speaker I've ever heard of. Cold controlling bastards, the lot of them,"_ the snake on the left laughed.

" _Show some respect you fool! We are in the presence of a Speaker!"_ the snake on the right snarled, which ended up being a somewhat more menacing form of hissing. I could hear the capital letter he used when speaking of "Speaker."

" _Yeah, whatever, I like him more than I do you,"_ I scoffed at the snake on the right, who flinched and looked like a kicked puppy. There goes my respect for snakes at the unflinching perfect predators. Hah I made a pun.

" _What's your name, speaker?"_ the left snake asked, " _I am Oda, and this is Asahi. He prides himself on knowing lots of history and traditions, don't mind him."_

" _Shinichi,"_ I responded, " _I have to admit I never knew that speaking to snakes was even possible."_

" _It's a rare talent,"_ the snake bobbed its head to each side, in a strange imitation of a shrug.

"We need to go Shin, people are talking," Touka warned me, completely left out of the conversation, but seeing eyes on us from the people that heard about Shin speaking to the snakes from the little boy calling to his mother about it.

" _I'll try and come back,"_ I told the snakes, and Touka carried me off. We left the zoo under a lot of stares.

The moment we had faded back into the crowds Touka addressed me.

"Okay what the hell was that?" she demanded.

"I just found out that I can speak to snakes," I shrugged. What was one more weird thing about me.

"You're so damn weird," Touka sighed, repeating my thoughts. She didn't have any bite in her words either.

"You finally stopped trying not to swear around me!" I gasped, and Touka pinched my leg in retaliation. We passed a parking garage.

"Hold up," Touka stopped. We both sniffed the air, smelling blood.

"Let's check it out," I suggested, hopping off her shoulders. We walked into the garage into a scene of gore. Blood was splattered over every exposed surface, and a ghoul's corpse was smashed into the ramp up to the second floor of the parking garage. In the center of it all was an unconscious human, and a ghoul with a single Kakugan hunched over him, talking to himself.

"Hello," I greeted, watching him. He whipped his head up to ours. He had dark hair, and his human eye was dark too. He had a high collared jacket on and corduroys, but there was a huge bloody patch in the center with the signs of getting stabbed by a Kagune.

"You're going to stop me from eating him? GET OUT OF MY WAY!" he shrieked.

"You don't want to do that. He's your friend, right?" Touka cut in, standing next to me.

"It doesn't matter," the ghoul's mouth started to water like a rabid dog's. "I'm so **HUNGRY!** " His Kagune sprouted from his back, three Rinkaku tentacles. I sprouted three of my own.

" **NO! You will not stop me!"** He wailed, and he lashed towards us with his Kagune. I deflected him, matching him tentacle for tentacle. Immediately though, I was locked down just trying to keep him off of me. His Kagune was wickedly fast, and his body was heavier than mine so every time I blocked or deflected one of his stabs or slashes I was pushed backwards.

"Dammit!" I cursed, taking a stab to the face. Touka blurred beside him with her Ukaku speed, and landed a blow to the side of his head. He slumped over.

"So how do you know this guy?" I asked, retracting my Kagune.

"I ran into him on one of my hunts. This is his best friend. And apparently he's been starving himself," Touka explained simply. We were about to go pick him up when he suddenly stood back up, _four_ Kagune tentacles sprouting from my back.

" **I will devour him and you will never stop me!"** he roared.

"Shit!" I sprouted my Ukaku and barely managed to grab the human and dodge as the one-eye's Kagune cut foot-deep gouges in the soft concrete where the human and I used to be. Touka's Kagune erupted from her shoulder, and after I deposited the human off to the side where he wouldn't be caught in the action, I joined her in double teaming the rampaging ghoul. He was clumsy and he staggered around, but his four Rinkaku were rocketing around at ridiculous speeds and holding both of us off at once. I was stunned, I'd never seen a ghoul that was better with their Kagune than their real body. Except for me, of course.

I sprouted my second Kagune, and used it to block with the speed boost that came with my Ukaku. Touka slipped past me and landed a heavy kick to his nose, but almost got caught by his Kagune as she retreated. I launched a salvo of Ukaku shards at him, but his four Rinkaku writhed in front of him, shattering the projectiles before they could make contact.

"You got any ideas?" I shouted.

"Outlast him?" Touka suggested, dodging a wide swipe.

"Yeah, like two Ukaku could do that to a Rinkaku!" I snarked, taking a Kagune to the arm, the limb quickly reattaching.

"I don't fucking know!" she growled, swiping at him with her hands and sinking a few of her Ukaku shards into his arms and shoulders as she passed by him.

"Thanks for the help!" I snarled back, flexing my arm and getting the feeling back into it as it focused on the high-speed fencing that I was doing with the ghoul. I thought about using magic, but I didn't want to use my trump card unless I or Touka were in any actual danger. Then, the answer hit me. I cut my hand back off with my Rinkaku, and charged forward with the hand held in my remaining limb. I held back my Rc cells from reattaching the limb.

The ghoul was suspicious, so he tried focused on keeping me away, and I took a heavy number of slashes, removing my leg and cutting chunks out of my chest, but I managed to keep going with the help of both my Kagune. I pushed further, and finally got close enough. I reached forward and slammed my detached hand into his mouth, and slapped him on the bottom of the jaw. He whimpered, and his Kagune dropped to the ground. He started chewing frantically, shoving the hand down his throat as fast as possible. Then, all of a sudden, his whole body seized up, and he fell to the ground unconscious.

"Just when I think you couldn't get any more reckless," Touka whined, reaching down and hugging me. My regeneration kicked in and my hand grew back and my leg got reattached.

"So really, who is this guy? Should I be jealous?" I asked her. I got a broken nose in response.

XXXXXXX

I had elected to be the first person that the guy saw when he woke up at Anteiku. When he did, his first thought was to ask me about his friend. Deep down inside my respect for him rose a little. Just a little. After hearing the whole story about how he wasn't like "you ghouls" and he refused to eat, he lost all the credibility he'd earned by holding both me and Touka off at the same time.

"He's fine, he's in the other room," I told him, watching the TV at the foot of the bed. It was a documentary about Africa, and the alligators were ambushing zebras.

"Oh…" he meekly shrank back, apparently intimidated by me. And… there goes that respect.

"You're at Anteiku," I told him when he didn't say anything more. Touka told me that he and his friend were regular patrons. His face lit up in recognition, and a bit of confusion. "All of the employees are ghouls. This place was founded by a ghoul that didn't want to kill humans any more." He blinked.

"He found another thing they could eat?" he asked with so much hope I could taste it.

"No, they find suicide victims," I shrugged.

"Oh…" he looked crushed. Then he looked up at me. "Why do I taste blood? What did you do to me when I was asleep? Did you-"

"No," I cut him off, "I force fed you my own hand to get you to stop rampaging." I glared at him. His eyes widened in shock. "You're an idiot, you know that? Even humans go insane and will eat anything when they're hungry. Settlers in America cannibalised during some super severe winters. You literally can't starve yourself, or you'll just lose yourself to your instincts and attack any human in sight. And if that wasn't enough this is the capital of an entire city with _millions_ of residents, a huge percentage of which are criminals. Go find rapists or murderers if you don't want to eat innocents. Have some fucking common sense."

"No…" his eyes teared up.

"Now the good news is, I'm a bit special, and the hand you ate should keep you full for a long, long time if you don't go having to regenerating yourself a lot or anything, so you have time to get used to the idea," I then told him, making him blink in surprise. "Just… do me a favor and don't ask why or tell anyone else about it."

"Yeah, sure," the guy actually cried. Not even alligators eating zebras was enough to keep me in the room for any longer, so I grunted and left. Touka was working a sunday shift, so I went to the bar and asked for my favorite cappuccino.

"How is he?" she asked, grinding the beans.

"A wimp," I sighed, hopping up and sitting on the bar so I didn't have to go on the tips of my toes to see over it.

"Hmm," she acknowledged. We stayed in a comfortable silence for a bit. A few minutes later Kaneki came out of the room he'd been sleeping in, and saw us.

"Thank you for stopping me from … eating my friend," he managed, bowing to us. Both Touka and I blinked, frozen in place.

"Sure," Touka grunted and went back to making my coffee.

"Yeah, yeah," I waved him off, before yelling, "hey gramps, you got the sugar cubes for wimp here?" Yoshimura came out of the back of the shop, holding a plastic bag filled with brownish sugar cubes. He handed the bag to Kaneki.

"Place these in coffee and they will stave off your hunger," the old man explained. My heart rate jumped at the sound of his grandfatherly voice, but Touka's hand on my shoulder calmed it back down. "And while you're here," Yoshimura smiled, "would you like a job?"

XXXXXXX

"This looks familiar," investigator Amon murmured as his looked over the blood splattered scene.

"Yes, I think this is Manticore and Rabbit too," Mado nodded, looking over the cuts in the concrete. "Though I don't recognize these Rinkaku gouges. At first I thought they were from Binge Eater, but they're too thick to be her, and they're all in straight lines, Binge Eater was always more curving with her Kagune."

"Sometimes I worry about how much you know about Kagune," Amon sighed. Mado merely chuckled.

"Ah, if only we had the time… unfortunately we've been assigned to the Mother and Daughter investigation, but I'll claim this one next," Mado assured his partner. Behind them, a bureau investigator pulled a brush mop out of a bucket filled with blood cleaner, and the mop rasped against the concrete as the minion started to clean the place of blood.

XXXXXXX

"Hello," I smiled.

"Hello," she blushed, hiding shyly behind her mother.

"Hinami why don't you go play with the nice boy?" Hinami's mother suggested.

"Okay…" Hinami nodded, and hesitantly walked over to me.

"So, Hina-chan, do you like music?" I asked.

XXXXXXX

"Hina and Shinichi, sitting in a tree. N-ack!" I punched Touka in the nose.

"Okay first of all, eww, I'm way too old for her, and second of all she's not my type," I whined. Touka chuckled, even as her nose healed. We were in a music shop, looking through the new CD releases. Touka already had a few in her hands.

"Look I'm sorry but it's just too funny. She wasn't in your presence for three seconds and she already started crushing on you," Touka laughed, "and you're the same age as her."

"Yeah, plus the six hundred or so years of memories I've got, but okay, I'm the same age," I said slowly, as if I was talking to a child. Touka just kept snickering.

"Yeah, whatever, one of these days you're gonna get a fanboy and I'm going to be merciless," I narrowed my eyes threateningly.

"Oh really," she smirked, "I'll be waiting."

"Heh, watch it be someone embarrassing though, like Kaneki," I chuckled, looking through the rap section.

"Don't even joke about that," she shivered. I nodded. There was no way she could ever get together with a wimpy guy like Kaneki. He'd be terrified of her all the time.

"So anyways, why are Hina-chan and her mom staying at Anteiku?" I asked, picking up an album from the stack.

"They're getting chased by the doves, her dad got caught, and they're not strong or skilled enough to live on their own," Touka clarified.

"Ah," I nodded. We took our purchases and paid for them at the register, staying comfortably quiet. We walked past a pair of bureau investigators. "You know, is it just me or is the CCG having a way bigger presence here recently?" I asked when we were out of earshot.

"They're looking for Hinami and her mom," Touka shrugged, "I'm just hunting in a different part of the city, it hasn't bothered us much. I know it's not a problem for you."

"Heh, 11th ward for the win," I cheered sarcastically, pumping a fist in the air.

"You know," Touka looked me over, "I think you grew again, your head is at my elbow, not below it."

"Really?" I asked, leaning closer. It was true, I was taller. Next thing I knew I felt pain in the center of my forehead, and my neck whipped backwards.

"Hahaha! Sorry I couldn't resist," Touka laughed, her elbow retracting to its normal position as she used my own words against me. I weakly punched her in the thigh, just enough to get her to feel it.

"So how's school going?" I changed the subject. She smiled.

"Well I failed english again because I didn't read the books," she started, "and I got a perfect score on my most recent math test last Thursday."

"What book were they?" I laughed. She really hated classical literature.

"Oedipus Rex, and a few plays by Shakespeare," she listed. I laughed.

"That was asking you to fail. I did kind of like Oedipus though when I stole the textbook from you," I told her. Yeah, I did that occasionally. She didn't use her English textbook anyway, so she didn't mind. We continued talking about schooling for a while as we walked back towards our home.

"So anyways," I spoke up after we had gone silent for a few moments, "You've never really told me about your family?" I turned and looked at her hesitantly. She thought about it, and nodded.

"Yeah, I guess you could know a bit," she admitted, "I've got a brother named Ayato. He left and joined Aogiri Tree. The only reason I have any idea where he is is because of Yoshimura's connections. I had a father, but he vanished one day and I never saw him again."

"Ah," I nodded, not elaborating.

"What?" she demanded irritably, angry at my reaction to her opening up.

"That's why you were so emotional when you heard I was being scouted by Aogiri," I clarified, "I figured there was some history going on, but I didn't ask then." She smiled faintly, unused to the kind of loyalty I was showing her.

We walked into Anteiku and ignored the first floor, immediately going up the stairs to place our new music up in our rooms. Afterwards, Touka had to start her shift, so I took my CD player down to one of the tables along with a fantasy novel called Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief. I loved it with a burning passion. I identified with Percy. Touka came down a few minutes later and started working, taking orders from the regulars that show up for evening cups of coffee before working a night shift somewhere. Anteiku was perfectly peaceful for a few, short minutes.

The door slammed open, and Kaneki burst into the room, yelling about needing to talk to Yoshimura and me. Touka blinked, and walked over and nudged me, getting my attention past the music. I looked up, and she gestured to the dark-haired half-ghoul.

"What's he want?" I asked, pulling my headphones down around my neck.

"Dunno, says he needs to talk to you and Yoshimura," she shrugged uncaringly. I groaned, and called for the manager. Touka smirked at my joke. I grabbed Kaneki and pulled him into the back room, and Yoshimura joined us seconds later.

"So what the hell do you want?" I asked, irritated at being interrupted.

"I can eat human food," he gushed.

"What?" I blinked.

"I can eat human food," he repeated, "I was at a cafe with Hide, and he forced me to eat. It still tasted really bad, but I didn't feel sick at all!" I looked at him, not seeing any difference. I poked him in the stomach for lack of ideas. Ghouls couldn't eat human food because on top of it tasting like shit their digestive systems rejected anything that didn't contain magic-filled Rc cells. If they did eat normal human food, their Rc cells would actually rapidly weaken in an effort to conserve their magical supply, reducing the ghoul to normal human physical capabilities, on top of giving them the food poisoning of the century.

"How long have you known this?" Yoshimura asked, like it wasn't obvious that he'd run straight here.

"A few hours," Kaneki clarified. All of a sudden I thought of something. I tugged on my fledgling magic, directing it to my hand. My Rc cells sung at the sensation of my magic passing through them, and they acted as a legion of magical focuses all perfectly attuned to my magic. I touched him on the chest, and pushed a tendril of power into him. I looked him in the eye.

"You're a wizard, Kaneki," I told him.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Here's chapter 2. Not sure how I'm getting this out, so don't expect the next ones to come quite as fast.**_

 _ **For any of you that are concerned, I'm not going to do all that much bashing, but this is a fic written in first person so the descriptions are going to be based on Harry's opinions, not reality.**_

 _ **I realized that I should have a disclaimer for any music that ends up in this, so yeah, I don't own Metallica or Jimi Hendrix' music, or any of the other music in this fic.**_

 _ **Thanks for all of you that Reviewed, Favorited, and read this, I really didn't expect such a positive response.**_

 ** _The plot will thicken, next time on Chimaera._**

 ** _UPDATE: I noticed that this chapter was a little too short for how I want them to be, so I added a chunk_**


	5. Chapter 3: Fueguchi

**Chapter 3**

"A wizard?" Kaneki repeated, neither skeptical nor believing me, just trying to process my declaration.

"Yeah, wizard, mage, spellweaver, druid, warlock, et cetera et cetera," I nodded, "you've got a magical core that's constantly producing magic for you to use. Rc cells live off the stuff."

"You do have proof of your theory, do you not?" Yoshimura raised an eyebrow. In response, I tried something new. I focused on a jar of coffee beans on a shelf next to us, and raised a hand to help my concentration. My magic surged eagerly, warmth filling me as I summoned my mystical abilities for the first time in weeks. My Rc cells greedily drank up my magic, and projected it outwards like thousands of tiny wands working together. My magic traveled across the room and latched onto the coffee jar. After a few seconds of effort, it wobbled, and rose into the air a few inches.

"Wow," Kaneki gasped, shattering my concentration, and the jar slammed back down onto its shelf.

"Believe me now?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yes," Kaneki nodded eagerly. Then he grimaced. "First I'm a ghoul, and now I'm a wizard too?"

"Actually, being a wizard makes being a ghoul a million times better," I patted him on the shoulder, reaching up to do it. "Your body only needs its Rc cells to survive, and your Rc cells only need magic to survive."

"I don't need to eat people," his eyes lit up with cautious joy.

"I don't think so," I confirmed, "It's not like I've met any others, so this is guesswork and personal experience."

"Still…" Kaneki teared up.

"But I still don't understand something," Yoshimura spoke up thoughtfully, "He couldn't eat human food a few weeks ago when he first left the hospital and became a ghoul."

"Huh," I put my hand on my chin, "that is strange. No clue on that one. Best guess would be that it was just a hiccup in the process as he went through the transformation." I gave them a helpless look with an accompanying shrug.

"So you're a wizard too?" Kaneki asked.

"Obviously," I laughed, making Kaneki chuckle sheepishly. After a moment, Yoshimura stepped towards the door.

"I should return to my duties, thank you Shinichi for helping Kaneki," he smiled at the two of us, and after a small bow of thanks to me, he exited the back room.

"So yeah, have fun figuring out how to use magic, I'll see you later," I told him and left as well, inwardly snickering.

XXXXXXX

Fangirls. Now I've read modern literature and a bit of fanfiction when I was scraping the bottom of the barrel and they've all said the same thing. Fangirls. Are. Terrifying.

They are.

I was sitting in my room, listening to my new music, relaxing on my bed and watching the clouds, and occasionally taking a peek at my door. It was cracked open, and every so often I caught sight of miss Hinami Feuguchi staring at me through it. It was humiliating. I'm a ghoul, I've definitely got some mental problems, and I eat my own kind daily in a ritual to gain power, and this little girl was idolizing me. I considered whipping out my Kagune and scaring her off, but I wasn't that kind of psycho, so I just laid there, occasionally glancing at my not-so-sneaky stalker.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore, and I stood up, making her dash down the hallway and shut the door of her and her mother's room. I walked into and down the hallway and down to the first floor. It was the crunch time of the day, and all of Anteiku's employees were on the job, though Kaneki was merely taking and delivering orders, they didn't let him make the coffee yet. I walked over and sat on the bar, just watching the shop work like a well-oiled machine. Kaneki actually picked up how to work in a coffee shop pretty quick, and he was gaining confidence steadily. A few minutes later I saw Hinami poke her head around the bottom of the stairs, continuing to observe me from a distance. Then Hinami's mom stepped around her, making her way towards the door. As she passed she gave a wink with a proud, knowing smile at me, making me blush and hide my face in my hands. Behind me I heard Touka snicker. Mrs. Fueguchi waved to the manager, and left the coffee shop. Yoshimura looked a little worried.

I heard the clink of a coffee cup and its dish being placed next to me, and I looked back to see Touka moving away from a cappuccino sitting next to me. Smiling with pride and thanks towards my first friend, I took a sip, enjoying the flawless drink. Kaneki had taken the news that he didn't have to eat humans like a man in the desert treats a glass of icewater. He was so excited that he started experimenting with using magic, and had picked up how to levitate objects in a matter of hours. I cursed the fact that I was still too young to be using magic regularly, feeling left behind by the kind one-eye. He didn't even have the advantage of the sparse memories that I had from the dark wizard. Truthfully, though, I was kind of glad to find another wizard ghoul, if only so we could share notes on magic.

When I finished my cup I was feeling a bit restless from the caffeine, so I set it down on the bar for Touka, and I went for a walk, grabbing my backpack from my room before I went, sending Hinami running back to her room again. I walked along the north side of the city, not wanting to deal with the CCG or the ghouls in the south at the moment. The northern edge was the most human-dominated part of Kakurega, and therefore the northern wards were the most peaceful out of the entire city. I thought about my fight against Kaneki, and honestly, I was feeling like an underachiever. Sure, I was regularly killing and eating ghouls in the 11th ward, but then an upstart half-ghoul comes along and wipes the floor with me with sheer _instinct_ , it was humbling. I had gotten better at using my Kagune, and I could move around like a normal person, but I still had no idea how to actually fight. I needed a teacher. I wasn't going to ask anyone at Anteiku, I didn't want to make myself look vulnerable to them like that.

I passed a family going shopping together, a mother and a father each holding one of a child's hands. The child was my age. I wondered where my family was. I shook my head, and moved on. It didn't matter, I had more relevant things to worry about.

I wandered aimlessly, feeling a little lost for the first time of my life. The euphoric rush of finally being free for the first time ever was fading, and in its place was numb emptiness. I didn't have a purpose or a goal, I was just… there. Yeah, I wanted to become a Kakuja, but what then? How was I going to spend my life? I didn't know. For all the help my ability to eat memories was, it couldn't help me find a purpose in life, as none of it applied to me specifically. I couldn't even say something like "keeping my precious people safe" because she was safe at Anteiku and didn't need to be protected, and I couldn't say "I want to help people" or "I want to bring peace" because I didn't care about other people so my heart could never be in either. Touka wanted to find her brother and bring him home, and she dreamed of working with a rock band on tour. She could never make the second one come true because she was a ghoul and it was far too dangerous, but the first still gave her a purpose in life. I felt numb.

I stopped in front of a sign that simply said "Karate". I would've gone in, but I didn't have the money to pay for lessons. I had the idea of coming back another time and taking a bite of one of the instructors, but it wasn't something I could do in broad daylight, so I shelved the idea temporarily. I continued walking away from the 20th ward, with no destination in mind. I flexed my magic without actually using it, the warm feeling rushing around my body like a wave of comforting heat. I didn't know when I would have finished going through my first maturity, and I was impatient to get started and catch up to Kaneki, but Ichirou's memories made it clear that trying to use magic outside of emergencies before my majority was finished could cripple my magical core forever.

I stubbed my toe on a piece of concrete. That was another thing that had changed in my days of freedom, I started noticing pain again. I could still ignore it if I wanted to, but I wasn't numb to it like I had been for the last part of my captivity. It all came back to the fact that I had really only been a real person for a handful of short weeks. Before then… I was a shell. A shell holding the possibility of a person that was stunted and suffocated by the environment I was in. I turned back the way I came when I saw the sky started to change color for the evening. I needed to pick up my mask and things from Anteiku before I went on my evening hunt. The city got progressively darker as I made my way back, and the people started looking over their shoulders and becoming more cautious. Just because we were in the peaceful part of the city didn't mean there weren't ghouls there. I was there, case in point.

However, unlike the calm atmosphere I was expecting to return to, Anteiku was in an uproar. Everyone was scrambling to get dressed in their masks and full gear, even Kaneki.

"What's going on?" I asked Touka as I weaved between Irina, Koma, and Yoshimura as they finished closing the shop.

"Hinami is missing," she answered.

"Damn," I scowled. "Any idea where she went?" I asked everyone.

"No," Irina and Koma told me, Yoshimura shook his head and Kaneki shook his head and slumped depressedly.

"Alright, I'll go looking to the east," I immediately said, and grabbed my mask from my backpack. I slipped it on and we left Anteiku through the back door. It'd be a problem if the populace saw a bunch of ghouls leaving a coffee shop together. I leapt to the roofs with my Ukaku helping, and I started sweeping the city eastward, street by street. On a strange note I saw that my Ukaku had taken on a bit of a purple color, which contrasted with its remaining blue-white nicely.

We searched for the entire night, and the entire 20th ward from top to bottom, and we couldn't find her. I had to head back to Anteiku to take a nap, to keep my mind fresh, but the older ghouls kept at it. Hinami's mother didn't come back either. A few hours later I was back at it, moving on to the 19th ward.

The place was swarming with doves. Not a single street didn't have at least one white-coated investigator there screening the crowds. I was worried, Hinami wouldn't survive the kind of scouring the war was receiving, especially because she was in the CCGs files. I had to take off my mask and pretend to be human while I looked. I got progressively more desperate. Finally I started listening in on a dove's conversation with his superior on the phone, and I heard him report that there was no sign of "Daughter" yet. My tension level rose another level, and I got back to searching with a strengthened sense of urgency. There still was no sign of either of them.

Then I came face to face with a white haired investigator and his partner.

"Well hello, child," he smiled. My heart screamed in fear, at his white hair, gentle manner, he was everything that I was terrified of.

"H-hi," I gulped. His smile turned a little predatory.

"My name is investigator Mado, what's yours," he introduced himself. The foot traffic around us ground to a halt as they saw the investigator pay close attention to a boy in the middle of the road. Whispers slowly started to pass around us.

"Shinichi," I offered.

"Ah, a strong name," he complimented, "have you seen a girl about your age, with brown hair wandering around without her parents? We believe that she's a ghoul." He looked me in the eye expectantly. I had the feeling that he knew I was a ghoul. I don't know how he knew, but he did.

"Without her parents?" I repeated, trying to manipulate the conversation to get as much information as I could. He smiled wickedly.

"Ah, well, we've already taken care of them," he patted his briefcase affectionately. I stiffened.

"Ah, you look a little worried there, did you hear a bit of bad news?" he inquired with barely hidden bloodlust.

"Mado, what are you doing?" his partner wondered, completely confused.

"How about we make a deal, little one," Mado offered to me, "I'll poke you in the arm with this pin, and if it bleeds, I'll give you ten thousand yen. If you don't bleed. Well, ghouls don't deserve money do they?" Amon choked when he realized what Mado was implying. The whispers grew louder.

… _Shit,_ I sighed in my mind. I had absolutely no way out of this one.

"Why would you do that?" I blinked, trying to act innocent in a last-ditch attempt.

"You know why, Manticore," Mado suddenly lunged with a thumbtack in his hand, jabbing me in the bicep. The needle didn't even make a scratch on my skin. "KILL IT!" Mado roared, pulling a Quinque out of his briefcase. I activated my Ukaku and tried to escape, but a spine-like structure slammed into the ground in front of me. I had to roll to the side to dodge as the rest of its length sawbladed through where I was a fraction of a second before. My Ukaku responded to my fear, producing more of its flame-like shape around the bottom of my neck and down my spine, further boosting my agility.

Amon pulled his Quinque out of his briefcase, essentially a Koukaku weight on the end of a pole, which Mado whipped his long Rinkaku Quinque at me again. Amon charged as I tried to avoid the writhing bladed whip that Mado was using with a shocking amount of skill. I let Amon get close, and then I shot my Rinkaku at him, the three barbed tips getting lodged in his Quinque's weight. I tried to hold him in place and use him as a meat shield against Mado.

Amon wasn't going to accept that.

He let go of his Quinque and punched me in the jaw, hurling me backwards. He caught his Quinque as it passed by him, dragged after me by my barbed Kagune, and he _pulled_. My Rinkaku were brutally ripped from my back, making me scream. I could feel my mind fracture as I lost the Rc cells in my Kagune, and in that moment I realized that there was more to the bond between my magic and my Rc cells than just a food and supplier relationship.

However it wasn't important at the time, I was preoccupied by Mado's Quinque cleaving me into two ragged edge pieces lengthwise. Even my head was bisected. I fell to the ground with a wet plop, my Ukaku dispersing like water vapor above a tea kettle. A large pool of red spread out from my body as my Rc cells struggled to recover from losing the mass of all three of my Rinkaku.

I didn't die. My Rc cells actually held my consciousness like a backup brain, and my body sewed itself back together in a matter of seconds.

"Look at its regeneration," Mado praised, "I've never seen anything that strong in a ghoul below SS rank. And he was B rank at the most." Amon didn't answer. I twitched weakly, my mind still recovering from the two huge blows it'd just received. I managed to look up at them. Mado was grinning viciously, but Amon looked… uncomfortable.I needed to get away from them. I was terrified, they were going to kill me and I was terrified and I needed to get away get away get away GET AWAY.

I grabbed hold of my magic with as much willpower as I could muster, and twisted it. My body vanished right in front of the investigators' eyes with a sharp crack.

I reappeared with another sharp crack in the alley behind Anteiku, through the sound was followed by a wet slap as my shredded body slammed into the ground. Someone screamed. My Rc cells finally recovered, and my regeneration started. Within a few seconds I was whole again, and I looked up to see Touka, Kaneki, and Yoshimura standing in the alley too.

"I ran into a pair of investigators," I explained, feeling phantom pains through both my body and mind from the severe damage I'd taken. I twitched, and felt my focus wavering, and my magic _scream_ from the extreme stress I'd place it under it fluctuate wildly, dangerously even, as if it stayed in a weakened state permanently I'd lose my magic forever. My stomach panged with hunger. I turned to them. Touka had approached me and was pulling me into a hug. I opened my mouth, about to take a bite out of her to fill in the cracks of my fractured mind with her memories, but I slammed it shut with an audible clack. I leaned into her hug, shivering. It was one thing being tortured in a lab. Being beaten down in a fight and staring death in the face? That was something else, at least it was to me. In the lab I knew he wanted to keep me alive. Mado wanted to squish me like a bug.

"Did they do that to you?" Kaneki asked.

"No," I shook my head through my shivers, "Magical teleportation is rough on people my age." Kaneki swallowed as he realized that the mystical force he'd been experimenting with was much less forgiving than he'd thought. "They saw my face," I told them.

"... Damn" Touka cursed. Yoshimura frowned. Kaneki grimaced, inferring what the consequences of that were.

I was now near the top of the list of Most Wanted beings in Japan. I relaxed into Touka's arms, and she stroked my hair gently. I succumbed to the stress of the extreme regeneration and magical exhaustion, and I fell asleep.

XXXXXXX

I woke up later, with the light of the sunrise shining through my window. My magic still felt… sore. I had overstressed it again, and it wasn't healing as quickly as it did the last time. I couldn't apparate again, not until I had far more magical power than I currently had. My body had been rejuvenated by my regeneration, but I still ached from the loss of so many of my Rc cells. I literally had lost a part of my body and soul when my Rinkaku were ripped from me. It made sense, when I thought about it. I absorbed memories from other people when I ate their Rc cells, so they're obviously linked to their host's mind. Mine were even further linked because of my magic. My Kagune had just become my principal weakness.

I stumbled out of my room, feeling tingly from the multiple instances of regeneration, and I knocked on Touka's door. She didn't answer, so I made my way down the stairs. I saw Yoshimura behind the bar.

"You're awake," he observed, "Touka and everyone is out searching still, they've looked everywhere but the far northeast. You've been asleep for two days." I whipped my head to look at him, the motion almost knocking me off my feet.

"Two days?" I exclaimed, leaning against the wall for support.

"You finished healing before you fell asleep, I assumed it was exhaustion that was keeping you," he wiped at a coffee cup, continuing to clean the shop's cutlery and dishware as he had before I'd arrived.

"She's still missing?" I said to no one in particular. I know I was irritated with her fangirling, but I did honestly think it was kind of cute… in a childish kind of way, but the knowledge that she was still out there completely on her own made me look at her differently. She had no one, just like I did. I needed to help her, I didn't want to face someone that I could have been if Touka had never found me. I didn't know if I'd be jealous or disgusted by what I saw. I breathed deeply, fortifying myself. "Where's my mask?" I asked Yoshimura.

"It was in your backpack when you teleported to us," he told me, and I sighed. It was scrambled into tiny pieces. I had gotten kind of fond of it. "Here," he handed me a black bandana.

"Really?" I demanded, taking the thing from him. It wasn't going to help me be inconspicuous in the least. When Yoshimura ignored my outburst I groaned, but tied the thing around my head so that it covered everything below my eyes. It was stuffy. I made my way out of the shop, the feeling in my limbs coming back the more I moved them. I needed to move quickly, so the moment I was far enough away from Anteiku I sprouted my Ukaku heedless of witnesses and sprinted, heading for the 21st ward and the northeast reaches of Kakurega.

It took me a good 20 minutes to get there, even with me sprinting at my supernatural top speed, and the sun had fallen below the horizon. The 21st ward had the city's river run through it, so the air was damp. I heard combat in the distance, and I rushed towards it. I emerged onto a fight scene between Kaneki and investigator Amon. I cringed, but released my second Kagune, and I leapt into the fight to try and take the man by surprise. I led with a flurry of Ukaku shards, and followed with my Rinkaku. He was focusing on Kaneki, but he still heard my shards coming and managed to get out of the way, only taking scratches that would bleed along his left arm and leg. He blocked my Rinkaku with his Quinque, but I didn't let my limbs get caught on his weapon a second time. He lunged and kicked me in the chest, something I wasn't expecting. I felt several things break in my torso, but I stood back up and ignored the pain.

"So you did escape," Amon commented, taking in both me and Kaneki, who looked pretty badass in his mask, I had to admit.

"I don't eat humans," I declared, trying to get him to let Kaneki go so we could find Hinami.

"Yeah right," Amon snarled, swinging his Quinque at me. On second thought, there was no chance that he was gonna believe that. I sliced at his quinque with my Kagune, defecting in above me, though I was driven to my knees as a result. I rolled backwards, hitting my head awkwardly on the concrete as his huge glowing weight cracked the ground behind me. Kaneki tried to charge in, but he only had three of his Kagune manifested, and he didn't have the advantage of instinct that he did against me. He hesitated, and so he lost, Amon smashing his Quinque into Kaneki's jaw and crushing the one-eye's head. I saw a chance, and so I retracted my Rinkaku and lunged, grabbing Kaneki's body and vanishing into the city before Amon could react to my escape. Ukaku speed has saved my ass yet again. Kaneki's head took several minutes to reform, but when he finally woke up I slapped him back into coherency.

"Where haven't you guys looked?" I demanded.

"Mado's after them!" He answered a question I didn't ask, but one I was more than happy to hear the answer to.

"Where is Touka and Hinami?" I snarled. He whimpered.

"By the highway bridge," he answered.

"Try and keep up," I told him, and I shot off towards the river, Kaneki matching my speed with his longer legs. When I started to hear the water of the river moving I heard a feminine scream. I pushed myself even harder, and my Ukaku grinded in protest, and then expanded, up and over the top of my head and forming a flaming mane of royal purple Rc cells that hid my hair from view and stretched down the back of my neck to my shoulders, where it widened to reach across my back, and then it tapered down to a thin strip down my spine to where my Rinkaku Kakuhou was in the small of my back. The boost in speed then left Kaneki behind me.

I made it to the bridge that carried the highway over the river, and I saw something that struck me like a bolt of lightning to the heart. Mado was standing with a butterfly-like Quinque stabbed into Touka. In that moment Mado was overlaid with Kanou, and my hatred of the two were combined.

I roared.

Five Rinkaku Kagune erupted from my back, and I charged at the investigator like a rabid animal on all fours, my Kakugan crying tears of blood. Mado turned and saw me coming, and blocked with his Quinque, but I overwhelmed it with my five Rinkaku and the veritable storm of Ukaku shards I was bombarding him with. His Quinque fractured, and he was forced to step back from the impact of my combined blows. Still screaming, I pushed forward, My Rinkaku writhing forward in a mess of slashes and slices, biting into his Quinque. It was pulled out of Touka as I pushed him back. She took a moment to regenerate the majority of her abdomen, and when she was combat capable again she released her Kagune and double teamed Mado.

I stayed a berzerker, seeing Touka so close to being killed was the one last blow to my mind that finally stripped me of conscious thought. I could not even consider Touka dying. She was my first and only friend, the first person to ever show me kindness in my entire life, and I refused to let her die. I refused to let her be hurt anymore. **AND I WOULD DO IT BY DEVOURING HIM WHOLE.**

I didn't find angles to attack from, I didn't retreat, I didn't move from side to side to keep him trying to defend from multiple directions, I simply attacked. A full frontal assault. Rinkaku and Ukaku, offense was my specialty after all. Mado didn't even have the chance to peek over the edge of his Quinque, I kept him entirely locked down and hiding behind the butterfly-like structure with all five Rinkaku battering it with heavy impacts, and my Ukaku raining on it, each shard with enough force to punch through steel armor plating. Touka moved behind him and attacked him from the rear. He had to use his spine-like Quinque to force her to back off, but the loss of focus gave me the opportunity to push him back even more. I stepped closer, dragging the barbs along the edges of my Rinkaku along the Quinque and tearing the thing apart. I finally tore a hole in one of the "wings", and my Ukaku shards poured through, tearing a piece out of Mado's neck from sheer impact. Blood spurted from the wound, and he gasped, clapping a hand to his neck as his jugular emptied itself. The arm holding his defensive Quinque lost its strength, and my Rinkaku ripped it from his hand, tossing it to the side. I tore into him like a rabid animal, my Kagune shredding him to pieces as I stuffed pieces of him into my mouth. Blood dribbled down my chin as I giggled psychotically at my victory. I had done it, I ate him. I ate him and saved Touka.

Touka.

I stood up, the madness receding from my Kakugan, looking for my reason for living. I saw her approaching, the wound in her abdomen completely healed. I rushed forward, and clamped onto her, my Rinkaku wrapping around us until neither of us could let go. I cried blood into her shirt.

"Shhhh, it's okay," she assured me, "he's dead." I sobbed, leaning on her awkwardly as my Rinkaku tightened, making sure she was still there.

"Shin-kun?" I heard, and I looked to see Hinami looking at me with a face of shock. I don't know whether it was my berserker rage or my emotional breakdown but she looked like her fangirl worship had been forcefully shattered. She was crying. I don't know what it was that exhausted me at that moment, but I collapsed against Touka, my relief quickly banishing the adrenaline and leaving me feeling helplessly weak. The last thing I felt was her fingers running through my hair.

XXXXXXX

I woke up to the same sensation that I fell asleep to, and I nestled happily against the petite hand running through my messy black locks. I cracked open my eyes, and I saw Touka sitting on my bed with my head in her lap.

"Good morning," she said quietly.

"Touka," I managed, my mouth feeling dry and cracked.

"Don't," she stopped moving her hand for a moment, "you kept your Kagune active for days without stopping, and then you regenerated virtually your entire body twice, and then you went and put your all against a first class investigator and pushed him back with sheer effort. You were starved. We had to feed you in your sleep." I cast my mind through my memories and found a collection of new experiences through a human woman's eyes. It seemed that gaining her memories had bolstered my mind the same way that eating her body had rejuvenated my flesh, strengthening it and mitigating the damage of my own experiences. I felt better than I had in days.

"Don't… don't ever leave... please," I whispered, tucking my head tighter against her abdomen.

"I won't," she promised, "I never will, my little Zero." A tear hit me on the cheek but I didn't look. She wouldn't want me to see her like that. When Kanou called me Zero it made me an object, something that he could use for his own sake. When Touka said it Zero became a medal of honor, a term of respect for the hell that I'd been put through. A testament to her respect and, dare I say it, love for me.

"Kaneki's been telling us about how you saved him from Amon," Touka finally spoke up after a bit, resuming running her fingers through my hair. I sniffed.

"No, I just grabbed his body and ran away after Amon dealt a normally fatal blow," I corrected. "My Ukaku made me faster in a straight line, so I got away."

"Heh, it's just like him to make you sound like a hero, and it's just like you to be oblivious to your own accomplishments," she chuckled weakly. "You know I've never really cared about anyone since my brother left me, I couldn't bring myself to trust anyone with my heart." She looked down at me. "You are precious to me. When I saw you regenerate from a… from a puddle of blood it _hurt_. I don't ever want to see you hurt like that again." I felt my heart clench, the words almost painful, but it felt like rain falling on a desert. I almost replied "why would you care," but I had the memories of tens of lifetimes. I knew why.

I had found my purpose. I would make myself so powerful that Touka would never have to fear for me ever again.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Chapter 3 is officially here.**_

 _ **While looking back over this as I was getting this chapter ready I realized that I've got some really embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes in here, so if anyone points out any that I miss I will love you forever.**_

 _ **Please review for any questions, comments, criticism, rants, whatever you need to say or ask. I want to continuously improve this so any feedback is appreciated. Within reason of course but you're all people with common sense so you already knew that.**_


	6. Chapter 4: The Manticore is Caged

**Chapter 4**

From then on whatever walls Touka and I had held between us were gone. I spent every moment I possibly could with her, the only time I actually was by myself was when she went to school. I hunted in the 11th ward then. I started eating two ghouls a day, wanting to speed up the Kakuja transformation process. I restricted myself to fighting them without my Kagune. I didn't know how to fight without them, so I forced myself to learn upon fear of death. I knew I could've asked Touka or the others (except for Kaneki) to teach me to fight, but I wanted to do it myself. I needed Touka's help to kill Mado, I wanted to learn to fight and win with nothing but my own strength. So, when she was at school I trained like the madman I was. I got Yoshimura to show me how to get down into the 24th ward, and I ran through the tunnels at a dead sprint, ignoring the burning in my lungs and the aching protests of my legs. I found a junkyard and bench pressed cars with my ghoul physiology, keeping the sets going until my arms burned and gave out, dropping the car on top of me. My regeneration would fix my arms up, and I would start again.

When Touka wasn't at school I followed her like a puppy. When she was working at Anteiku I sat on the bar and watched her work, and she'd talk with me when she made the coffee behind the bar. When she wasn't working we lazed in her or my room together, as the CCG knew what I looked like. The two of us were so euphoric at finding someone else to completely open up to that the both of us were like drug addicts, completely at the mercy of the fact that we were so relieved and comforted by each other that we just didn't think about doing something without the other. We didn't think about how the CCG was hunting me either. It was incredible. For the first time in my life I had someone that I knew loved me, and for the first time since her brother and father utterly broke her trust, she had someone she could be vulnerable with and not worry about being betrayed or abandoned.

I knew that I was getting severely attached to her because of the lack of love I had in my childhood, but I didn't care. She was everything.

I had to get a new mask made. Touka and I went to Uta's shop with me wearing a dust mask to hide my face from the public. There were wanted posters of me now, accurate drawings of me with both my Kakugan active. We moved past them quickly so no one could compare me to them. Uta was happy to get more business. He said that Yoshimura had called ahead days before telling Uta that I needed a new mask, so it was already done. It was a shiny metal faceplate in the shape of a lion's face, with the same locking and joint mechanism on the jaws. I could see through the openings where the lion's eyes would be, and I could still breathe and smell through it. It was a little heavy, but it was aluminum so it didn't bother a ghoul like me.

Once we'd gotten my mask, I only left Anteiku to go on my daily hunts. It was too dangerous to let myself be seen by the general public, not only dangerous to me, but also dangerous for Anteiku itself, if the CCG every had reason to suspect it. I was pretty much settling down into life, and I finally had a period of what I could consider peace. The whole incident which Hinami running away faded into the past. When asked why she ran away, she said that she was looking for me, but got lost somewhere in the 19th ward, and ended up wander farther and farther east, which made me briefly guilty. She assured me that she simply didn't understand the threat of the CCG, as her parents had kept them hidden up until then and she'd never had to worry about the doves. After she assured me that she came after me because of her own rash decisions, and not because of me, my guilt left me alone.

My magic mostly recovered from the beating I put it through, but it hurt every time I tried to use it, like touching a fresh burn wound. I put my proverbial foot down and vowed not to use any more magic until I'd hit my maturity and could handle the strain. It was hard though, because Kaneki was learning quickly. I didn't know if he was just naturally talented or if it had something to do with using Rc cells as a spell focus but he was learning to manipulate magic at an unreal pace. Recently I saw him transforming pebbles into elegant cups for the shop to use, and he had started helping clean up the shop every day by vanishing all of the accumulated filth. He was comfortable with his magic. After having to fight as a ghoul with his Kagune, and going through the madness that it brung, he was happy to have a way to be useful that had no relation to his ghoul physiology. He was okay in my books after seeing him in battle against Amon, he was giving it his all, so I didn't look down on him for not wanting to fight anymore. It was clear now that he could if he wanted to, he just preferred a more peaceful existence.

Hina-chan was living at Anteiku too, now that she was orphaned. She helped with the shop where she could, but she was too young still to actually work there yet. She'd taken another of the rooms on the top floor. She'd stopped stalking me everywhere too. I didn't know what had gotten her to stop, but I didn't ask.

On another note, for the first time in my life I was studying. I'd decided that I was completely and totally done with being good for nothing in a fight save for a surprise attack. The fight against Mado didn't count, I wasn't conscious during that, I was acting on ghoul berserker instincts and I can't take credit for something I didn't actually do. So, in order to better myself, I was on the internet on the computer in Yoshimura's otherwise spartan room looking up different styles of combat. The most obvious and the first things that I looked up were different kinds of martial arts. The problem with those were that they had no way of being able to work with my Kagune, they were made for humans with only four limbs, not me and my nine. I moved past martial arts, looking for more basic disciplines. Boxing, wrestling, kendo (sword fighting in general really, but kendo specifically was the most well-known in Japan), all of them looked like they might be usable, but needed years of practice that I'd never have. I couldn't go find a martial arts master and eat his memories either, because martial arts is muscle memory and tactics. I'd still have to spend months adjusting the moves I'd gained to fit my child's body. And I was being hunted by the CCG and I needed to stay incognito, but that was secondary.

Speaking of the doves, they'd been forced to pull back some of their forces when they couldn't find sign of any of us after the handful of weeks since I killed Mado. As a result, I could manage to sneak into the 11th ward and hunt just wearing a hoodie and keeping it tight around my face. I was still worried about security cameras, but I stayed in crowds so there could never be a clear shot.

"Zero, you heard this one yet?" Touk asked me from where she was going through her music collection. Yeah, she'd started calling me Zero instead of anything else. She was trying to help me lose my negative attachments to the name, or something. I didn't really know but I trusted her and I didn't care what she called me.

"Which one is it?" I rolled my head over towards her. I was napping in the corner, It'd taken me a while to find a ghoul to eat the night before so I hadn't gotten much sleep before the day started.

"Rubber Soul, the Beatles," she illuminated me, showing me the CD case.

"No, haven't," I mumbled, curling back up into a ball against the wall on top of the balled-up blanket I'd commandeered for the specific purpose of laying on.

"Hmm, I'll have it out for you," she placed in on a visible stack on top of her shelf. I breathed deeply, starting to doze back off.

"Hey, Shinichi!" Kaneki called from downstairs. I exhaled, holding my temper. I was so close to falling asleep. Grumbling under my breath a few choice curses I clambered to my feet and made my way to see what the one-eyed magical prodigy wanted. I arrived to see Kaneki's hair rapidly changing color from black to white and back, forming combinations of the two, and making all kinds of monochrome patterns. I blinked.

"Well that's new," I commented, staring as he shifted his hair to all white.

"I spilled some coffee beans on my head when I was moving one of the sacks of beans to the back room earlier, and when I wanted my hair to stop looking like a dirty mess it suddenly turned white. Look, I can get my nose to change too," he pointed to the center of his face, and as I watched his nose moved up and down and side to side across his face.

"Some kind of shapeshifting?" I ventured. My wizard memories were distinctly unhelpful. All of a sudden the door slammed open. I turned around to look towards the door, and I saw a flamboyantly dressed man in a purple suit with a red dress shirt with hair that was not brown, not black, not even a dark blue, but fucking purple. Now I love the color purple, but how the hell does a guy get purple hair? The biologist side of me wanted to strap him down to a table and cut him apart to find out, but my common sense held out this time.

He started saying things really loudly and drawing attention to himself, ignoring the fact that he was disturbing the other ghouls that were currently in the shop trying to get their coffee, and I immediately tuned him out. I couldn't stand his… dramatic flair, not when I was groggy and cranky. I patted Kaneki on the hand, as high as I could comfortably reach, and I walked past him. It was about 4 in the afternoon and it was clear I wasn't going to get any more sleep, so I needed my cappuccino to clear my head. I walked behind the bar and filled the grinder with beans. I set it on the counter, and walked back over to Kaneki. I grabbed the one-eye by his wrist and pulled him towards the grinder to get him to make my caffeine fix. He had sucked at making coffee at first, but he was pretty much getting up to Anteiku standards. Kaneki seemed relieved to get away from Purple Guy. I wondered why? Kaneki whipped up my drink in a timely fashion, but my plan was successful and Purple Guy left before Kaneki had finished, meaning I hadn't had to deal with him. Touka had come downstairs while Purple Guy was still flaunting his ego, probably looking for me, but she'd been caught up the his conversation and was trapped. Sorry Touka, take one for the team.

"So who was that?" I asked her when the guy was finally gone, normal noise levels returning in the shop. I sipped my cappuccino daintily, savoring the taste.

"That was Shuu Tsukiyama," Touka griped, grabbing the cup from my hands, taking a gulp, and handing it back. I looked between the much reduced cup and the foul thief, and gave her a light glare.

"The Gourmet," Yoshimura elaborated, "he runs a ghoul restaurant and fancies himself a connoisseur of ghoul cuisine."

"Sooo, creepy loud guy that wants to find the perfect flesh to eat?" I summed up my impression of the flamboyant ghoul.

"Pretty much," Touka shrugged, not wanting to go to the trouble of saying anything more. "I've got a test tomorrow so I'm probably gonna be busy the rest of the day."

"Alright. I'll probably go hunting early then," I shrugged. Touka always wanted to be alone so she could focus during the rare times she actually did her English homework. I sighed, looking at the cappuccino that had vanished so quickly, and sent another glare at Touka for taking so much of it. I handed her the cup, letting her be the one to clean it up in revenge, and went upstairs to get my mask and change out of the sweatpants and hoodie I was wearing. Throwing on my usual tank top, cargo pants, and the new addition of my bandana headband to keep my hair out of my eyes. It was getting longer, and I hadn't cut it since the first time, because they had to make it so short due to the way I ruined it trying to do it myself. My mask separated into top and bottom pieces, those being the upper and lower jaws, so I could fit it into my cargo pockets on my pants without it being obvious what I was carrying. After I tied my sneakers back on, I walked out of Anteiku, waving to the others as I passed by.

The 11th ward was just as dangerous as it always was. I still used the roofs, to keep a better view and stay as hidden as possible, hopping from building to building, though I didn't need my Ukaku to make the jumps anymore. The investigators were getting frustrated, because for every ghoul they killed in the 11th ward it seemed like two took its place. There were that many ghouls in the most severely ghoul-infested above-ground ward in Kakurega. I arrived just before sundown, because at my walking speed it took me a good hour to get there. I climbed up a fire escape and looked over a ledge, scouting out the crowds and sniffing the air, trying to see if I could smell or spot my next meal. I saw a ghoul walking down one of the main streets that looked like a perfect candidate with his classical Japanese middle-aged-man appearance with balding hair and a round head and body, but after following him for a while it was clear that he wasn't going to give me an opportunity to attack him somewhere other than in plain view of the human population I gave up on him. Moving on, I saw a young female ghoul younger than Hinami shivering in an alley, but I ignored her. First of all, she wasn't big enough for a meal, and I didn't eat kids just for that reason, and second of all she wasn't my problem so my attention left her the moment I deigned her not worthy of consumption.

My interest was piqued when I caught sight of a delectable specimen that was pretending to help a child find its mother. She was average height, with black hair down to just below her shoulders. She was pretty, but not especially attractive. She wore simple clothes that didn't stand out, a shirt and blouse and flat shoes kept her unassuming. She was holding the hand of a boy maybe ten years old, and every so often she wiped at the edges of her mouth to keep others from noticing that she was drooling. The I dropped to the ground in an alley where I couldn't be seen from the street, and hurried to put her back in my field of vision. I tailed her for a few blocks as she followed the kid's directions.

She tugged the kid into an alley, and I recognised my cue. I came around the corner and saw them vanishing into the space between buildings that can't be seen from the street. A few seconds of walking had me arriving on the scene, where the woman was staring down the boy, and the boy was backing against the wall of the alley in terror, staring at the woman's active Kakugan. My footsteps clacked on the paved ground, and they both looked at me, seeing nothing past my shiny new mask. I activated my Kakugan, the red and black contrasting with the shiny silvery color of my mask.

"Oh, you want the leftovers?" She asked me graciously. I was touched, I really was. My Rinkaku Kagune shot from my back and almost nailed her to the wall behind her through her chest.

"Run, kid," I said, giving the human one chance to escape and get out of my way. He obeyed, good for him. The ghoul snarled at me.

"That was the first good meal I would've had in weeks," she stepped towards me and my single Rinkaku tentacle, her Bikaku extending from behind her and wavering back and forth in a cat-like motion. It was a single six foot long round tentacle covered in barbs like sharkskin. It didn't cut by having a sharp edge, it cut by sawing through you.

"You're too close," I deadpanned. She blinked, measuring the four or five feet of space remaining between us. When I didn't say anything else she either assumed I was either screwing with her or crazy, so she swiped forward with her tail. A second Rinkaku joined my first, both working together to block. When the barbs on her Kagune caught on the sharp edges of my two blocking limbs, I extended my remaining three Rinkaku, and stabbed forward with them. She leaned out of the way of the first two, but her head moved directly into the path of my last bladed tentacle and it pierced her skull with a dull thump.

"Well, at least I know I can handle D ranked ghouls now," I snarked to myself, annoyed with the fact that I was only getting weak ghouls every time I hunted. I didn't get lucky and get even an A ranker once, I was frustrating because I wanted battle experience, I needed to get used to fighting and coordinating all of my limbs together in a vicious harmony of bloody evisceration. Is it a bad thing that I was starting to wax poetic about my need to get really good at killing things?

Anyways, I unlatched my mask, and started eating. If my luck held I'd be able to finish her whole body completely before the boy that'd run off got word to the doves and I had to run like a bitch to get away. Her memories were kind of depressing, her life was a boring monotony of finding young boys to lead around like a mother and then devour whole. It was a good thing she never found a boyfriend and had kids because she would've eaten them all. I was pretty desensitized to depravity and insanity by now though, so the experiences didn't have as big an impact on my psyche as they could have. When I'd escaped from Kanou I hadn't had a life before that, so I didn't have a personality to resist the incoming memories, and so my personality was heavily influenced by the memories from Kanou, the dark wizard Ichirou, and the few first ghouls I'd eaten. Now that I'd lived for a while making my own decisions and experiencing emotions first hand, eating memories didn't affect me quite as much. When I ate memories I got all of the sensations, sights, sounds, tastes, et cetera et cetera, and I got all of the knowledge that came along with the memories. However, none of the memories that I ate came with the emotional attachment that people have to their own memories, so my own mind was instinctively stronger than the incoming memories once I'd developed a self-image. My emotional attachment to my memories of Anteiku, Touka, and the others was stronger than the lifetimes of distant memories that I'd eaten. I was sure that there was some idealist out there that would find that inspiring but it was something that I'd noticed, filed into my memory, and moved on from.

My luck did actually do me a favor, and I ate the female ghoul's entire body. The metabolism of a ghoul was fast enough to empty my stomach almost as fast as I could eat it, so I could easily eat a few times my own bodyweight in one sitting. All of the nutrients and biological building blocks went to multiplying my Rc cell count and reinforcing my bones, muscles, skin, tendons, and other important tissues. I had no idea just how high my Rc cell count needed to climb to become a Kakuja, but I had at least eight times as many as the average ghoul, after gorging myself on my own kind like I had been. I turned away from the bloody puddle that was left of my meal, and my foot splashed in the blood. I walked a few feet away, and lifted my foot up, scraping it on the wall so I wouldn't track blood out into the street and give myself away. When my shoes were as clean as I was going to get them (I sighed thinking about how I was going to have to wash them off once I got home) I left the scene, slipping my mask into my pockets and for once not running from the sound of approaching CCG.

Before I made it out into the street, though, my hackles raised, and I looked back over my shoulder. The alley behind me was empty, but I was feeling… uncomfortable, like I was missing something I should've noticed. I looked up, left, right, even back in front of me, and I couldn't see anything suspicious, but I couldn't shake the feeling. I set aside my unease, keeping it just behind a level of logic, and rejoined the human population on the main streets. I set a course for the 20th ward and home, keeping my head down and combing my hair over with my hand so it looked a little more normal and wasn't quite so distinctive. It wasn't really long enough to look even, but it did a passable job. The feeling of being stalked by a predator faded away once I left the 11th ward, but I kept my guard up until I got back to Anteiku and was safe in my room. I sat on my bed, hugging one of my snake plushies, until my unease was too much for me to stand. I knocked on Touka's door, and a few seconds later pushed my way in. Touka was sitting at her desk, her headphones on and studying like she'd told me about earlier. I walked over and sat down on the floor next to her, leaning my head back so it rested against her thigh, and I hugged my plushie tighter. I felt her absently stroke my hair, and I shivered. I was terrified, I'd never felt like that before, and I was being unpleasantly reminded of the times before Kanou would come up with a new experiment to test my tolerance for the potentially (or non-potentially) fatal.

The next day I didn't leave the shop, my uneasy premonition wouldn't go away. To pass the time, I went and bugged Kaneki, getting him to show me what he was teaching himself to do with magic. He was getting a lot better at levitation, and he could propel objects in a fixed direction like they were given a sharp tug towards where he wanted them to go. He showed me his vanishing ability, where he focused on what he wanted gone, and after a few seconds of effort the thing would disappear. His demonstration was with a few coffee beans held in his palm I had him repeat a few times. He'd place a bean or two in the center of his open hand, and he'd stare at them for a few seconds, and then all of a sudden they'd be gone without a sound or visible indication of the supernatural act occurring. I asked him if he could do the same with people organs, say their eyes or throat, so they would be blinded in a fight or bleed to death. He spluttered, completely uncomfortable with the subject. He'd also apparently been practising with his shapeshifting, he could make himself taller and shorter, and he could adjust his body fat level. It took him forever to make a visible difference, but how many people can say that they can make themselves taller with sheer willpower? His color transformations had gotten more varied too. I watched him as he cycled his eyes through the primary and secondary colors of the color wheel, followed by the tertiary.

"You know," I commented to him, "if you get good enough at this shapeshifting stuff, you could probably transform your Kakugan away if it activates when you don't want it too. Of course you could just learn to control it the normal way, but whatever."

He was surprised by the idea, pleasantly surprised, of course. He was always happy to hear that he had another way to keep pretending to be human. When he was done sharing his magical progress with me, I wondered what to do next for about four seconds, and then I started to bug Keneki into teaching me how to make coffee, the Anteiku way, of course, I'd never allow myself to learn an inferior process of brewing such an important beverage. Kaneki commented something about caffeine addicted kids but I was busy looking over the kettle and grinder and the lines of labelled coffee beans in rows on the shelf underneath the counter. He demonstrated how to grind up the beans, pour them through the filter and the special cup that holds the filter. He told me that it was important to pour the hot water through the beans slowly so that the water got all the coffee out of it that it could in a uniform manner, and collect in the mug underneath at the right consistency, temperature, and at maximum concentration without having any grains. I was actually impressed, the guy had pretty much mastered an entirely new skill in a matter of days. He was a lot more competent than his submissive personality would suggest.

Touka got back from school that day in a bad mood. She stomped up the stairs and slammed her door hard enough for the whole building to shake. Hesitantly, I made my way from my room where I'd been talking to my snake plushies in snake language and cracked her door open, peeking inside. She was pacing around her room, her Kakugan active and cursing like a sailor.

"Touka?" I ventured carefully, my tone nervous. She looked over at me, and her Kakugan went dormant.

"Fucking human teachers," she cursed, hurling herself backwards and landing on her bed hard enough to bounce once before going still. I stepped into her room, closing the door behind me. "I spent hours studying last night and I was all prepared for today, but my teacher told me she wouldn't give me points unless I turned in a few other papers on that Greek book that we were supposed to do a few months ago. I'm not going to do those so all that effort yesterday was completely wasted. I'll say it again, fucking human teachers." I didn't say anything about how she could just half-ass the two papers, she wasn't in the mood for my usual witty comments.

"You know I could probably write those, I did read it you know," I instead offered, coming to stand next to her legs hanging off the side of her bed. She leaned forward, looking at me.

"You know I was going to say no because you've never written a paper before, but then I realized you've probably got a bunch of different versions of highschool floating around in your head. If you do that'd be a lifesaver, the prompts are in the left drawer of my desk," she pointed, chuckling at the fact that she was going to leave the work of a senior in highschool to a 12 year old that had never gone to a class in his life. As a matter of fact though, I only had one version of highschool in my head, the one from Kanou, and he went through med school so I did have a lot of knowledge on how to write papers. It still made me uncomfortable relying on skills gained from the mind of a monster like him, but I wasn't really one to talk, and I was the kind of person to use all assets available to me. Touka gave me an affectionate bump in the shoulder with her fist, and rolled all the way on top of her bed.

"So what'd you do today?" she wondered, "let me guess, you sat in your room reading and listening to music? No, you drew skulls and crossbones on all of Kaneki's eyepatches? No, you already did that, oh, you finally asked somebody to teach you to make coffee?" I clapped when she made the right guess. Yeah, I drew pirate flags on all of Kaneki's eyepatches. He wasn't as amused as Touka was.

"Yeah, it looks deceptively simple," I confirmed, hopping up on the bed and laying backwards so I was sprawled on top of her. She pushed me off so only my head was using her hip as a pillow.

"It takes a bit to notice the patterns and tricky differences," she closed her eyes and stretched. When she was done she reached down and pulled my head to her shoulder and rolled on her side, wrapping her arms around me protectively so I was nestled up against her. I felt warm and comforted and I pretty much lost all form of conscious thought from bliss.

"Wanna have a sleepover?" she suddenly suggested, grinning childishly.

"Sure," I smiled back a beaming grin that lit up my whole face. It wasn't much of a sleepover, considering we were one door apart along the hallway, but we were a couple of kids with terrible childhoods and we wanted a sleepover. That night was the first time I slept without feeling restless, vulnerable, or numb.

After spending two nights being comforted by Touka, I was much more confident the next day, and I ignored the uneasy feeling that had been lingering since that moment in the alley. It was Friday, so I wanted to eat one more meal for the week, and then spend the whole weekend with Touka. Therefore, when she went off to school that morning, I made plans with her to teach me the little tricks to making coffee later that day. I left Anteiku a while after her, my mask in my cargo pockets and a hoodie zipped up my chest and its hood over my head. I almost flinched when the bad feeling hit me strongly again, but I dismissed it as paranoia. I stopped by a candy shop and bought a lollipop with money I'd nicked from Kaneki. It tasted like dead fish in my mouth, but I didn't have the urge to spit it out beyond just disliking the taste just like the other wizard ghoul in town, and a kid with human food in his mouth is far less likely to be connected to a famous ghoul than one with an empty mouth.

I found a ghoul passed out on a roof in the 11th district, his breath smelling of alcohol and a mostly-empty bottle of fermented blood on the ground next to his hand. He was laying face-down close to the edge of the roof, wearing a heavy-duty one piece jumpsuit and work boots like he was a construction worker, though there was a tear in it at the small of his back, identifying him as a Rinkaku. It felt kind of embarrassing just cutting his head off and digging in, after having such a bad feeling for so long and all I had to deal with was a free meal. I ate him quickly, and started back towards Anteiku, swatting my hand by my ear when I heard a strange noise through my right ear. I felt a sensation not unlike a pinch in the back of my hand, and I brought the hand in front of my face, uncomprehendingly. There was a dart made of quinque steel sticking out of it. My magic _hissed_ in displeasure as whatever was in the dart made contact with my Rc cells. My hand started to go numb. Not the numb I'd fallen into in Kanou's labs where I merely ignored my sensory input reflexively. No, my hand went limp like a marionette with cut strings. I heard the noise again, but having my focus on my hand I didn't manage to block and I took two more darts, one in my shoulder and one in my neck. I stumbled, and fell to the ground as whatever it was in the darts shut down the nerves in my neck, including my spinal cord. My magic weakened, and I could feel my Rc cells losing strength the longer the stuff spread through me.

I tried to call for Touka, but my mouth wouldn't move. I had fallen backwards when I lost control of my body, so I was laying face up on the roof with my eyes open, and to my utter horror a familiar aged face topped with white hair entered my field of view.

"Hello, Zero," the good Dr. Kanou greeted me kindly, "you've done well in returning yourself to me." A grunt approached and threw me over his shoulder, my face ending up getting held against his back as the minion held me over his shoulder stomach-down. I heard us go down a long stairway, and through a door, the sounds of the city getting momentarily louder. I hear a van door open, followed by a metallic noise. I was thrown bodily into a cage made of quinque steel Koukaku bars, completely paralysed and my Rc cells dormant, without the focusing properties of which I couldn't teleport to safety with. The door slammed shut, and locked, and the van's rear gate was closed. The car immediately took off at an easy pace.

He'd gotten me.

XXXXXXX

 _ **I don't know if any of you recognized the scene but Touka listens to music through headphones while studying in episode 3 of the TG anime, it's where I got the inspiration to make her a music lover and it ended up in this too.**_

 _ **Did you know that it's impossible to insert a chapter anywhere but the end of the story? I just found that out, I think. I wanted to put a glossary at the beginning for all the Japanese names for ghoul organs and the like so my fic was a little more user-friendly, but it kept ending up after chapter 3, and I didn't want to delete all the other chapters and then add them back in just to put one 100 word post at the beginning.**_


	7. Chapter 5: Menin Aeide Thea

**Chapter 5: Menin aeide thea, Peleiadeo Achilleos**

The van pulled into a large building, and stopped. My cage was taken from the back of the truck and carried through the garage that I could see through the cage bars from where my head was. Not being able to move, especially knowing that you were about to become a lab rat _again_ , was utterly and completely terrifying. I was taken through a hallway, down a flight of stairs, down a few more hallways and around a few more turns until finally I heard thick armored doors open, like the ones they put on bunkers. I was taken into a cubical room with featureless concrete walls that smelled like the sickening scent of antiseptic, and my cage was tossed gracelessly onto the ground, making me feel momentarily weightless and then slam back down on the floor of my cage, splitting my skull open. The break healed quickly enough, but I was paying more attention to the fact that I saw a new table made of quinque steel with shackles made of the same and several needles and IV drips standing to one side on IV stands. Kanou was moving between wheeled counters that had various instruments and tools on them, seemingly preparing for… something. I was roughly pulled from the cage, and slapped face up on the table by the burly minion, aggravating my mostly-healed skull wound. I tried to will more Rc cells to the area to get it to heal faster, but I couldn't get a response from them, and the Rc cells around the wound naturally were sluggish and lazy in their efforts to repair the damage to my head. The minion placed my wrists and ankles in the shackles, and locked them shut. Then he pulled a last metal brace over my forehead, and locked it in place as well. I presumed that they didn't use a strap over my neck so they'd have easy access to the veins in my neck. I wasn't happy when I'd realized that.

"You have no idea how encouraging it was to hear of your exploits, Zero," Kanou began conversationally, "Word spread all too quickly through the ghoul population about a 'cannibal child' that was killing weak ghouls with impunity. I knew it had to be you, after hearing the description of your Kagune, I knew that you were the only Rinkaku and Ukaku chimaera in the city." He turned to me, and started placing the IV needles in my arm. I had been hoping that they wouldn't be able to pierce my skin, but the were made from Quinque steel, so they slipped through and into my veins with little trouble. "Three darts full of Rc suppressant," he shook his head, "frankly I was a little disappointed, I wanted to witness your strength firsthand before we captured you, but I had no reason to expect that with your Rc cells suppressed you'd be paralyzed like you are now. It does mean that you won't be able to escape like last time, not when you can't even breathe." The moment he said the words "Rc cell suppressant" my blood turned to ice in my veins. If he had an actual Rc cell suppressant, then he was taking away _everything_ that I could use to escape. I wouldn't have the physical advantage of a ghoul, nor my Kagune, and while my Rc cells were suppressed, they couldn't act as a focus for my magic, leaving me supernaturally helpless as well. On top of that, I was apparently paralyzed as a by-product. I was completely at his mercy. AGAIN.

"I am, however eager to find what made you so much stronger than the other ghouls," Kanou finished placing the IVs in my arm, including one that constantly drew a small amount of blood. "After all, normal ghouls at your age are somewhat... fragile, and I have yet to know if it's merely your dual Kagune, or if it is your unique endurance that enabled you to become so powerful so quickly. Ah, where to start?" He walked up in front of me, and sliced into my thigh. "Why don't I begin with a tissue sample?"

I whimpered through my paralysis. Kanou looked at me in surprise. I'd been used to pain the last time he'd had me, because I felt pain my entire existence. There wasn't a moment that I didn't feel pain, so I never screamed, complained, flinched, or in any way showed discomfort regardless of anything that he did to me. However I'd spent the last several months protected by Rc cells, and only getting injured every once in a while, so I'd gotten soft. Now that my Rc cells were suppressed I was left raw and tender, and the sensation of having the sharp scalpel blade cut into the living flesh of my thigh was excruciating beyond anything I'd ever felt. Kanou _smiled_ at me. Like he was happy to know that I could feel pain. He took a cube of tissue from my thigh after making four more incisions, three to make a square and the last to separate the cube from the underlying tissue. He placed it under a scope and a few other sensors and started running tests on the flesh, wasting no time getting started. I suffered motionlessly as my Rc cells lazily knit the wound back together.

"Oh, oh my," he suddenly spoke up, "my boy what have you done to yourself?" He turned to me, "Your Rc cell count is _12 thousand_." I didn't really know how to take that information. I knew that was about 12 times the average ghoul's Rc cell count, but I was still waiting to become a Kakuja, so although I knew that having that many supposedly would make me incredibly powerful, I was a bit discouraged about how many it took to induce the second level I was searching for. "How is your body not devouring itself trying to survive?" He asked me incredulously as if I could respond to him. I felt a little vindictive though, that I knew I could survive because I was supplying my Rc cells with all the magic they needed, and he didn't know it. It wasn't a satisfying form of revenge but I took what I could get. "It's so wonderful to have a suitable test subject again," the madman addressed me as he took notes on what he could see in my blood, "the last was a human with sufficient resistance to the side effects of Rc cells that I could implant a Kakuhou into him successfully. A Kaneki Ken, I believe it was, he was the closest to a true half-ghoulification that I've ever created, but he doesn't come close to you. Though it is curious, why you have two Kakugan while he only has one." He turned to me suddenly, and pulled my eyelids away from my right eye, looking over them for anything unusual.

"I do wonder though, how did you survive in the city? You were out there for months and you were never caught. There is your peculiar escaping ability, but where did you sleep? What companionship did you keep? Ah, my curiosity abounds," he let my eye go. He tapped the bag that was gradually filling with my blood, and deemed it full enough. He detached it from the IV, and smiling, left the room to take it somewhere else. I wished I could close my eyes and try to sleep my captivity away, but I was still paralysed and I couldn't move even them.

XXXXXXX

Have you ever been awake in a room where the light level doesn't change so long that the only way to keep track of time is your weak, half-paralysed heartbeat? I had taken to counting the times I felt the organ in my chest pulse and estimating each pulse at being a second apart. I had counted to 3,467 when I lost count because Kanou shocked me trying to test the effects of electricity on me now that I was a ghoul. I had counted to 5,679 when I lost count because He cut open my head and tried to see how removing pieces of my brain would affect me. I don't know how long I was unconscious after that, but when I finally regained awareness I started counting my heartbeat again. 2,541 and Kanou tried burning me to see its affects on my cells and their regenerative qualities. So he used a blowtorch to trace lines across my body and cut my torso open to test the flames on my organs. I lost count. 8,329 and Kanou tried filling my lungs with water to see how I would survive. I didn't need to breathe, so I was completely fine, but the weight of having my lungs completely filled with water was painful. I lost count as my body tried to cough the water out reflexively, but the Rc cell suppressant still had its hold on me, so all my lungs did was twitch, making water droplets leak from my mouth and nose. 1,163, Kanou skinned my left arm and cut the skin into tiny pieces, scattering it around the floor. He watched and took notes as the individual pieces of skin knit back together with agonising slowness and then flopped up and down on the ground next to me as it tried to reattach to my arm. He observed the movement avidly, as the flopping skin had no musculature or other kind of biological motor function, and yet the skin was rising off the floor for an inch or two every few seconds before falling back down with a wet plop.

Then it got worse. He hypothesized to me out loud that my brain was controlling my Rc cells with minute electrical signals and electromagnetic radiation, as my Rc cells acted like a neural network when not going through a regenerative process. This meant that he was back to cutting into my brain and running tests on the pieces he sliced out of my head. He attached electrodes directly to my cerebrum and stabbed me in different locations, seeing my brain's reactions. When he couldn't find anything out of normal human brain activity, save for a slightly higher number of connections in the nerves of my frontal lobe, he got… frustrated. He started shocking me, and since I still had water in my lungs the current was channeled straight through my organs and tender flesh. I convulsed, the clenching finally getting me to empty my lungs of a good part of the water. He never found anything, he was looking for magical qualities with non-magical analysis.

He then had the idea that he couldn't find anything because he was a human, so he brought in ghouls. I was shocked to see a ghoul follow him in the room with a shaggy head of dark hair. My eyes would've shot open if I could move them. As they were, they merely twitched. He looked shockingly similar to Touka. I'd just met her long-lost brother Ayato. Kanou had him smell me, taste me, and lay into me with his Ukaku. Kanou had Ayato do everything he could think of to try and get Ayato to see what made me different. The only good thing in the situation was that I could see Ayato grimace every time Kanou made him do something. He looked uncomfortable going through with it, but he hid it from the doctor well enough. He seemed to like eating me least of all, and it wasn't just a normal dislike for ghoul flesh, he flinched the first time the taste of my muscle and skin touched his tongue, and he hesitated the few more times that he took a bite.

Then one day Ayato stopped coming, and Kanou looked somewhat irritable. He started grumbling to me about the leaders of Aogiri Tree reassigning Ayato, "taking away his essential assistant," he worded it. I had a hard time hearing what he said past when he mentioned Aogiri Tree. That bitch Eto had given me to Kanou. She had HANDED ME BACK TO HIM ON A SILVER PLATTER. I'd only ever felt angry once before when I'd seen Mado nailing Touka to a pillar, and the resul had been me descending into a blind rage and unleashing a new level of both my Kagune. This time I was angry on my own behalf, and this anger was like an icy razor-edge urging me, no, seducing me to tear her limb from limb and devour her whole. My anger was hot and blazing at first, and I struggled against the paralysis, making my fingers clench slightly, but not accomplishing much more. Then, as I counted heartbeats, it condensed into cold wrath that endured just beneath my conscious thought, waiting patiently to be called forth. One way or another that fucking one-eye was going to die, painfully and in the most humiliating way that I could make happen.

Kanou finally stopped cutting me apart, and seemed to resign himself to the fact that he wouldn't find out what made me different. Instead, he started extracting my Kakuhou, presumably to implant them and hope that they'd integrate with the host and lower the mortality rate of half-ghoulification. He didn't realize that I could still control them even when they weren't nearby, and a while later when I felt my kakuhou get implanted in hosts like I'd guessed, I activated my Kagune from within them and lashed outwards blindly, hoping to kill Kanou (or at least someone) in the only way I had access to. I felt my Kagune slice through something, but I didn't know if it was the host body, someone else, or the walls around the host. I made sure to have the organs eat the host alive. As useful as it could have been to have half-ghoul puppets that I could control from a distance, I couldn't risk Kanou having an epiphany for once and gaining any kind of leverage over me through them.

He tried four more times, twice with each Kakuhou, before giving up.

Getting my Kakuhou extracted was even worse than having pieces of my brain cut out of my body. If losing my Kagune was psychologically damaging with how tightly bound together my mind and Rc cells were, then losing the entire organ was psychologically shattering. I was lucky that I managed to regain my reason, or at least I believed I did. There was doubt, but that was because I left alone the chance that I could have finally gone truly insane. I didn't want to think about that.

"You are simply the most frustrating specimen I've ever had," Kanou complained to me with a dignified tone, sitting next to my table. He leaned on the table and rubbed his temples with his hands, stressed by the fact that the various methods of torture that he was placing me under weren't satisfying his need for understanding. "I feel like I'm so desperately close… and yet I cannot seem to bridge the gap between myself and the answers that I seek. Would you be able to tell me, I wonder? Would you even do so if I asked?" No I wouldn't, not even to save my life. I wouldn't give him any kind of victory. "If I could just find out what it is that makes you _different!_ " He yelled, whirling around and punting one of the wheeled tables against the wall, making a few cutting tools clatter to the floor with a clear ringing noise. "I am starting to believe that you were sent to me by God as punishment for my arrogance," he spoke to me while facing the wall. "I've learned more about ghouls than anyone else in this world, yet I still want to know more. God, intimidated by my zeal, sent you to me as a reminder that I can't comprehend the deepest of secrets. AND IT HURTS!" He kicked the table again. He whipped his head around to me, tears streaming down his aged face. "WHY WON'T YOU REVEAL YOUR MYSTERIES?" He grabbed a wide blade and drove it into my chest. "WHY WON'T YOU GIVE ME THE SECRETS I NEED TO BREAK HUMANITY FROM ITS CAGE?" He pulled the blade out and drove it back it, blood splattering over his white labcoat. "WHY?" he screamed, driving it into my skull between my eyes. He breathed in and out, and left, leaving the metal in my head and my mind struggling to function without a significant part of my brain mass.

He didn't come back. My mind deteriorated as I lied there with the blade through my brain, counting heartbeats. Assistants started coming to replace the IVs so my Rc cells stayed suppressed. My magic finally stopped trying to have my Rc cells repair my brain, and the primary seat of my mind moved from my brain to my collection of Rc cells. Slowly, my thoughts started to clear again.

Then everything changed again, though this time it wasn't because of something that someone else did.

I felt my magic… throb strangely, and then it _swelled_ , filling up my physical and metaphysical body with power and making my Rc cells shift slightly in their dormant state. My magical power multiplied, and then stabilized. I felt it pulse, and return to an even and smooth state of being, like a still pond filled with clear water, waiting to be put to use. I actually saw something like a pool of water deep in my mind, and I saw something reflected on it. I saw Touka being held against a wall by Ayato, as he _ate her Kagune_. As much as my logic was telling me that it was just my imagination, my magic and my emotions flared at the sight, more than they'd had in God knows how long. I felt fear. I watched helplessly as Ayato wiped his mouth of the blood left behind after he'd eaten her Kagune in its entirety, and let her crash to the ground, tears falling from her eyes. I saw her mouth my name. Then, I understood. This was about to happen, and I needed to stop it. I needed to escape immediately. I needed to escape. I needed to save her. I needed to escape. I needed to save her escape save her escape save her escape save her **ESCAPE**.

My Rc cells and magic _sung_ , surging together in a parallel effort. My Rc cells threw off the suppressant, gorging on my increased magical strength and overpowering the suppressant's ability to control them. They twisted, _evolved_ , changing from the pattern that was placed on them by their creator thousands of years ago. They became something new, because I needed something beyond the normal ability of Rc cells. My two Kakuhou shifted in my body, expanding and multiplying the number of Rc cells they contained to an unprecedented concentration. They shot tendrils between each other and linked together down my spine in a pattern not unlike brain stems forming a spinal cord between them. My magic roared purple, lighting my entire body up like a neon sign, and my Kagune exploded from my back in all their royal purple glory.

They shredded the table I was laying on, and I ripped my way off of it. Someone threw open the door at the noise, screamed, and ran. I tore the blade out of my skull and felt the wound heal. My Kagune started to… transform. My Ukaku spread forwards to envelop my entire head in a flaming mane, solidifying into a mask over my face, and forming demonic horns on each side of my head facing forward and down. Four of my five Rinkaku moved to wrap around my limbs, fusing together into an exoskeletal structure that coated my entire body below the jaw like a second skin, growing into claws on my fingers and talons on my toes. With a horrific crack my legs were mutilated as the exoskeleton shifted into a digitigrade joint system like an animal, growing taloned paws on the end of the armored limbs. My last remaining Rinkaku expanded and lengthened, moving downwards to become a true tail, and my Ukaku shot a thin line of flame-like purple Rc cells down my spine and the Rinkaku until it spread out and covered the barbed tip of the tail-like Kagune. I had to lean forward to counterbalance my larger and heavier Rinkaku tail, assuming an easy and graceful stance not unlike a Tyrannosaur or a Velociraptor. My mask split open, its lion like-visage snarling with a fanged mouth.

I roared, shaking the walls from sheer volume, my magic filling the action with the power it demanded. A Kakuja was loose, and I was _**ANGRY**_.

XXXXXXX

On the ground floor of a scientific hub for Aogiri Tree in the 11th ward, ghouls patrolled the hallways, chatted with each other, and shared meals of humans caught wandering a little too close. All of a sudden a low-pitched noise blasted from underneath them, shattering all glass in the building and throwing ghouls from their feet from the vibrations in the ground caused by sheer subsonic volume.

 **IRATUSQUE ADITUS IN DEO**

An aura of purple light formed around the entire complex, shifting like the light at the bottom of a pool.

 **A FACIE FURORIS EIUS**

A ghoul in the entryway behind a desk managed to hit a red panic button underneath the workspace, and the building filled with alarms that sounded pathetic after the noise that Aogiri had just been exposed to.

 **ET SPOLIARETUR OMNI PECCATA**

XXXXXXX

I tore through the metal doors like tissue paper, my impossibly strong limbs propelling keen claws through the metal with enough force to hurl the doors off their hinges and embed them in the wall behind them. I bolted out of the room of my imprisonment on my two bestial legs, bounding at a speed that would've blurred the walls past me if my enhanced reflexes and senses weren't strengthened just as much as my sheer physical power. Even though I hadn't moved in a long, long time I didn't have the slightest difficulty with coordination. I could feel the presence of the Rc cells in my body with a new level of clarity, and I had a constant feed of information in the back of my mind that told me where every part of my was at all times, meaning that I never stumbled because I always knew _exactly_ where my feet were, and where I needed to place them to keep my balance and keep moving forward as fast as I could run.

Alarms started blaring, and I roared in response, my Kakuja form's vocal chords creating noises that my human voice box simply was unable to produce. I turned a corner, and not seeing any stairways in front of me, I got impatient. I whipped my tail above me, slicing through the ceiling with barely any effort, and reaching upwards with my claws. I called on my magic, and _pushed_.

The ground above the small hole I'd made was hurled upwards like it'd been shot out of a canon. I saw light through the newly-made tunnel, so I jumped up and climbed, my four limbs working in concert to carry me up the tube of rock and dirt as easily as they did on flat ground. I emerged into chaos, with ghouls running back and forth, and a collection of them holding submachine guns and other weaponry pointed towards the hold and the pile of debris lying around it. The moment they saw the ten foot tall monster I'd become (even leaning forward as I was, I'd be taller if I stood up straight), they fired, and the salvo of bullets slammed into my Kakuja form harmlessly, the few Q-bullets that they had merely punching finger-sized holes into me that regenerated before the next bullet hit. Ignoring the barrage of hot metal that I was being subjected to, I lashed forward with my tail, bisecting the entire crowd at once save for a few Koukaku that were a bit faster than the others and thought to block with their Kagune. I leapt forward, landing feet first on one like a Velociraptor and I bit down on his head, swallowing his upper body whole. I tilted my head back, swallowed, and purred in satisfaction at the first meal I'd had in what seemed like eternity. The memories filtered into my mind. A lucky shot hit me in the eye, popping the organ like a water balloon and spattering my mask with purple blood. I turned and looked at the shooter, a ghoul in a soldier's uniform complete with an ammunition vest and visored helmet, and I chuckled.

"You're next, relax," I crooned, my voice distorted into a demonic many-toned voice that sounded like hundreds of people speaking at once. I dug my right talons into what was left of the ghoul I'd half-eaten, and I lifted it with that leg, balancing perfectly on the other, and ate what was left of him with a half-hearted gulp. I turned to the ghoul that'd shot me, my eye finishing its reformation in its socket, but my magic pulsed, reminding me. I had someone else to worry about, someone I needed to protect. I turned back away, towards where my intuition was telling me to go, and I busted straight through the building's walls, ignoring all barriers while going as fast as I could go, hurling debris in every direction as I powered forward.

I exploded into the open, and took to the streets, running faster than cars were allowed to go on the city roads I was following, and terrorising all that witnessed my passing. I stomped over cars, flattening them under my weight, smacked aside pedestrians that were in my way, spattering them over whatever had the bad fortune to be behind them at that moment. I laughed madly, enjoying the screams. It took me eight bloody and gore-filled minutes to move out of the city-proper, and approach a pair of boxy buildings that emanated the sounds of combat. I screech-roared once more, announcing my presence like a 21-gun salute at a funeral, heralding the approach of death. I leapt upwards, clawing into the sides of the building and tearing chunks of it off as I tried to lift myself up towards the roof. I stabbed my tail a decent ways into it, and I used the leverage to lift myself to the edge of the roof, where I dug my talons and claws in and pulled myself onto the scene. Kaneki was holding an unconscious Touka and had completely bleach-white hair, looking at me in calm surprise, while Ayato had taken a step back from fear.

"And what's this? Another Aogiri tool?" Kaneki wondered out loud at my demonic appearance.

"Hardly," I growled, my many-toned voice making him finally show a sign of true surprise. I turned to Ayato, and lunged. Before he could dodge I had my claws poised to pierce through his throat and the Ukaku-flaming tip of my tail a mere fraction of an inch from the skin between his eyebrows. "You have five seconds to convince me that you weren't just torturing your sister, just because I'm feeling a little lenient with Kaneki-chan here taking care of her."

"I-I was trying to make a point to her," he desperately tried to explain, "She's been going soft at Anteiku and I want her to grow stronger so she isn't killed by crossfire in the war between ghouls and humans." I growled, blowing his hair away from his face from our proximity.

"You're disgusting," I spat, kicking him in the chest, a blow that flung him clear off the roof. I turned back to Kaneki.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I demanded, sniffing at the blood in the air. I heard orderly footsteps approaching around the building, which meant that the doves were there.

"Who are you?" Kaneki demanded first, not wanting to trust an unknown.

"You're acting a lot more assertive than the last time we shared notes on magic, Kaneki," I told him, swinging my huge head back to him. "Here," I cut into my Kakuja's wrist with one of my claws, and held back my Rc cells from healing the wound with a thought, "let her drink my blood, it should jump-start her regeneration."

"Shinichi," he breathed. Then he yelled, "where the fuck have you been? Touka's been almost suicidal! She thought you abandoned her too!" The words hit me in my heart viciously. Then, he registered my words, and angrily held her mouth up to my wrist. Her lips were cold on my weaponized skin. A few seconds after my blood hit her tongue, she breathed deeply, and the superficial scratches on her skin vanished. I pulled my wrist away and let it heal. The tissue on my Kakuja form's chest opened like a flower blooming, peeling away and letting me poke my head out. Touka opened her eyes, and saw me crying purple tears of blood through by Kakugan.

"Zero?" she breathed, her eyes going wide.

"I came back to you the moment that I could," I sobbed, my Kakuja's limbs drooping to the ground.

"Where were you?" she asked, her hopeful relief giving way to suspicious anger, tears streaming from her face. Kaneki shifted awkwardly, feeling left out.

"... Dr. Kanou found me again," my head fell. Kaneki's eyebrows shot past his hairline, and he and Touka made eye contact briefly. She looked back to me, and lifted herself up, placing a hand on each side of my face. She looked me directly in the eye, Kakugan to Kakugan.

"... alright, I believe you," she said seriously. My Kakuja's tail might have wiggled back and forth a little bit from the sheer euphoria I felt at that moment.

"We need to go," Kaneki cut in. The sounds of doves fighting the remainder of the Aogiri presence were getting louder as the ghouls were pushed back into the upper levels of the building.

"That's my cue," I nodded. "I'll hold them off for you," I offered, still looking Touka in the eyes. "I promise that I'll see you again before the sun rises." She nodded, pulling her hands back to wipe at her eyes. "It's my 13th birthday, after all." I leaned back into my Kakuja's chest, and the opening sealed. I stepped away, my tail passing up above their heads, and I stabbed my claws into the roof. I pulled, and ripped a chunk up and away, and I dove into the entrance, my sides scraping against the edges of the opening.

It was cramped. I was ten feet tall, and if I stood up straight my head and back carved a huge trough in the ceiling, and I was a good seven feet wide so I barely fit in hallways with a few inches on each side. However, whenever I hit a barrier (like a doorway) I just went straight through it. Superhuman strength, an easy solution to any problem. I tore into a room where Aogiri was fighting with a few lower-ranked investigators wielding mass-produced bikaku Quinque called Tsunagis that were straight double-edged swords six feet from pommel to tip, and lacking any kind of guard on the hilt.

I slaughtered them all, ghoul and human. I stabbed a few of the Quinque through my upper arms, wanting to keep them for later. Having an extra blade could be useful in the right circumstances, especially because their Rc type was one of the two that I didn't have. I kept charging on into investigator-claimed territory, devouring investigators and ghouls as I went. I cleared the top floor within a few minutes, shrugging off any blows like the pitiful attempts to harm me they were with a freakish level of regeneration, and I repeated the process I'd done with the building's roof to move down a floor.

I blazed a bloody path through the second-highest and third-highest floors, but when I got to the fourth and penultimate floor the investigators ran instead of trying to fight. They either lost their nerve or resigned to the certainty that I presented. I only caught a handful before they all disappeared down the stairs or jumped out the windows. I chased one final investigator down a flight of stairs and emerged into a large entryway with room for me to move around in as I caught the man in my teeth and threw him up, and swallowed him whole. I looked down, and saw a single figure standing stoically in front of me.

Kishou Arima. CCG's reaper.

"Oh, what an honor," I enunciated, my lion's mask pulling into a grin. His face didn't stray from its perfectly emotionless expression, but he opened his case, pulling out a Quinque. He pointed it at me, and shot an electrical blast made of highly-charged Ukaku cells. I flicked my tail and I countered his Ukaku with my own. A three foot long spike of condensed Rc cells shot from my tail at half the speed of sound, crackling with magical energy. I missed, it was the first time I'd ever used it that way, but the projectile glanced off of his Quinque, creating hairline fractures around the point of impact. He looked at his weapon, and decided that he didn't want to risk further damage to it, so he opened his case again and brought out his second Quinque, which was shaped like a lance. I charged, lunging with claws and teeth, and his Quinque shifted into a Koukaku shield that (surprisingly, to me at least) held against my assault. He pointed his Ukaku Quinque at me from behind the shield and hit me in the face with a point-blank shot, whipping my head backwards from the impact. He followed up by shifting his Koukaku Quinque again and transforming it into a mass of several bladed tentacles which then stabbed into each of my limbs a few times each.

"You are too strong for my Narukami alone, but with my IXA you are not powerful enough to seize victory," he spoke clinically. My Kakuja's chest opened and my head peeked out.

"Fuck you," I grinned, showing off all of my teeth, and shouted at him, pouring magic into the mundane action and inducing a magical concussive blast that hit him in the chest with the force of a ½ ton truck and flung him backwards, both his Quinque falling from his grasp as his grip slackened from the hard blow. I immediately stabbed forward with my Kakuja's tail as my head retracted into my Kakuja's chest, and Arima rolled to the side to dodge, coming out of the roll on his feet, pushing his glasses up and cringing at the severely cracked lenses. I leapt forward, leading with my talons and claws as my fanged lion's mouth grinned with bloodlust. He stepped underneath my jump and sidestepped my tail as I tried to bisect him as he passed, and he grabbed the handle of IXA. My flaming mane crystallized, looking like scale armor along my head, neck, and back, and launched at him as fist-sized crystal shards moving just under the speed of sound. They shattered against the shield form of IXA, pushing Arima back.

He stabbed IXA into the ground, and a pillar of Koukaku blades sprouted underneath me, but I pushed off to the side, firing more Ukaku shards at him. He whipped up the shield in time to defend. The shield was starting to frustrate me. He made his way to Narukami as I threw a few more Ukaku spikes at him from my tail, which broke against IXA's shield but still threw his balance off, but I was too far away to stop his empty hand from closing around the hilt of Narukami. He charged forward with IXA in its shield form, Narukami switching modes to its blade form, and I met his charge head on. We clashed, My Talons grating on IXA and making sparks. Narukami flashed, and my right arm fell to the ground.

Arima coughed, blood dripping from his mouth. My Rinkaku tail was sticking out of his chest, having slipped through the gaps in IXA's shield form. He smiled at me.

"Out of all the ghouls I've faced," he rasped, "you're the first to think of that. I complained to Kanou when he made it about the weakness in its defense that the openings made, but he assured me that I'd appreciate the increased visibility." Narukami dropped from his hand, and he fell forward against the shield. I felt a shift in the atmosphere, and I poked my head and shoulders out of my Kakuja's chest.

"You were the investigator that helped Kanou open the crate I arrived in. You let him have me," I said to his face, a part of me deeply satisfied.

"And I know that I'm losing to a human, ghoul though you may be now," he smiled. I blinked at his words uncomprehendingly. I was a ghoul, mind, body, and soul. His breath rasped one more time, and he went still. I pulled my tail from his chest and jerked IXA and he fell to the floor bonelessly. I nudged him with the Quinque, just to make sure. When I was convinced he was dead, I retracted my Kakuja, the massive outer body dissolving into a cloud-paste amorphous substance that disappeared into my back. I turned IXA around, getting used to the sudden shift in perspective now that I wasn't ten feet tall, and grabbed the Quique by the hilt. It had three triggers on it, and I pressed the first, making the weapon return to its normal lance-shape. I stabbed it into Arima, and then brought it to my mouth. I licked the blood off the lance, but I didn't get very much from the blood, strangely, just knowledge about swordsmanship and other things like how to drive and car and write reports at the CCG. I licked again, and realized that his blood was magica. That explained how he was able to keep up with the supernatural physical abilities of ghouls. I picked up Narukami, and walked to his open Quinque case where it'd been thrown by our fight. It had a pair of spherical slots in it, and when I touched the Quinque to the slots they shrunk into perfect orbs that slotted into place perfectly. I closed and locked the case, and picked it up. I ran for the window, crashing out of it and vanishing into the darkness of the early morning.

XXXXXXX

"He did promise," Kaneki assured Touka, placing a hand on her shoulder as they sat at a table in Anteiku with the rest of the staff. Tsukiyama was leaning against the bar, and Hinami was sitting a table over facing them. Surprisingly, Ayato was standing a distance away from the others.

"We'll see if he shows up," she shook her head, holding her knees to her chin in a vulnerable manner and staring at the sky as it started to brighten. The bell on the door rung, and a battered me walked into the room. I placed the Quinque case down and promptly fell on my face. Touka rushed to catch me, but my nose hit the floor before she could get there. She turned me over and pulled my head into her lap.

"Next time, I'm not going to fight a Special Class investigator on my own," I chuckled, overwhelmed and trying to treasure the sensation of Touka being there, safe and sound. The others gasped.

"A Special Class?" Nishiki Nishio stammered.

"Which one was it?" Kaneki wondered.

"Arima," I sighed, making the room freeze.

"CCG's reaper? That Arima?" Touka repeated flatly.

"He's dead," I answered the next question they were going to ask, "So who's the newbies?"

"He's dead?" Yoshimura demanded.

"I stabbed him through the heart and watched the light leave his eyes, yes he's dead," I confirmed irritably, though my anger was quickly banished by the feeling of Touka's fingers running through my hair. Holy shit had I missed her. "So by tomorrow the CCG is going to be going nuts trying to hunt down the one that did it. Who're the newbies? And isn't that guy the Gourmet?"

"I'm Nishiki Nishio," the blondie offered.

"Shuu Tsukiyama," the purple wonder bowled elegantly.

"Renji Yomo," the tough blonde man grunted.

"Nice to meet you," I sighed, feeling exhausted by fighting Arima immediately after finally going through my magical maturity, becoming a Kakuja, and fighting other investigators and ghouls for a good hour.

"I'm Aya-" Touka's brother started, but I cut him off.

"Yes, I know who you are, and you know who I am. Sorry that my flesh tastes so bad, I know Kanou forced you to eat but you hurt my feelings, you know?" I said with false sincerity. The collective glares of the room would've killed him on the spot if it were possible.

"Actually, I… I need to speak with you," he started hesitantly.

"Later," I waved him off, "right now I need to sleep in an actual bed, take some time to come to terms with escaping that fucker Kanou a second time, speaking of which, Kaneki and Touka you two are telling me what you know about the guy, and in the next few days…" I trailed off. "I think we should leave the city."

XXXXXXX

 _ **And there's chapter 5, the longest chapter to date.**_

 _ **The name of this chapter is the first line of the Iliad, "Behold the wrath of Achilles," as close as I could switch it to the English alphabet. Greek can switch around word order without changing the meaning of the sentence, and Homer put the word "wrath" at the beginning, so it has the greatest emphasis out of any word in the sentence, and because of that the first word in the first work of western literature in human history was "wrath." Now you know.**_

 _ **Also, the word "digitigrade" means that it's shaped like bird, dog, cat, and most four-legged mammal rear legs in that it has a knee up high, an ankle, a long foot that forms the last part of the leg, and the "foot" is the pad and four toes. It means "walks on toes," roughly. I had to look it up the first time I saw it, so here's the definition so you don't have to go through the trouble.**_

 _ **And just a comment on Zero's Kakuja form, it gives the Gryffindor lion a whole new meaning, doesn't it?**_


	8. Chapter 6: Flight From Death

**Chapter 6: Flight from Death**

"Ayato, you wanted to talk to me," I started the conversation, the two of us sitting in my room at Anteiku while I held a snake plushie up to my chest and laid comfortably under the covers. I had the right to be lazy and self-indulgent after… however long it really was that I was imprisoned. I hadn't asked anyone how long it'd been yet, as I'd pretty much gone straight to sleep, and then asked for Ayato when I woke up. Considering the first time I saw him he'd been harming _her_ , I wanted to find out exactly why he thought he could survive being in the same room with me, and if what he had to talk to me about actually was worth it. He didn't really seem like an asshole, but I knew that some people (read: Dr. Kanou) could hide their true nature fairly easily under the right circumstances. In any case I wanted to get this talk over with as quickly as possible so I could be completely sure that I and Touka and the others were safe, whether that meant he was on our side or dead in a ditch, it would end one way.

"Um, yes," he met my eyes carefully, acting perfectly submissive. It was completely different from the, admittedly short, few times that I'd seen him that I knew something was up. Ayato had a dominant personality, he made decisions and acted, and accepted the consequences. For him to be showing this much fear and trepidation, well, it made me wonder what could drive him to such an extreme. He was kneeling on the floor next to my bed so he'd be at eye level to me. I had a stool off to the side of my room, and there was a table he could have sat on, but the vindictive part of me was enjoying the sight of him kneeling in front of me. I'd told him not to sit on anything as a way to try and make him uncomfortable, and I'd gained something unexpected from it. It made my morning a lot better than most, in any case.

"Um, yes?" I drawled, letting a bit of my impatience enter the tone.

"Right," he drew himself up, seeming to gain composure as he breathed deeply. "After Kanou… after he had me… eat you, I've been… different." His eyes grew distant as he tried to put his experiences into words, only managing broken and vague sentences. "I've been less hungry, and when I've eaten other things I've had… I wouldn't call them visions but I've _known_ things that I shouldn't." I listened to him with a growing combination of scientific curiosity, fear and horror, and confusion. What he was saying was sounding frighteningly familiar. "Then, not too long ago, Kanou tried to have me tortured for not helping him… find things out about you. The held my head under water, but I wasn't bothered. When they let me go I didn't need to breathe any more than normal, even though I hadn't breathed the entire time. What did you do to me?" He was looking more and more afraid as he went on, or to be specific, his fear was becoming more obvious as his discipline faltered. I set down my plushie and tapped him on the chest.

Ever since my magical maturity I was fundamentally different. In essence, my magic previously was something that was generated by my magical core, and my magical core was a metaphysical organ that was in simple terms a part of my mind. However my mind had migrated to inhabit my Rc cells in a way it hadn't before due to Kanou's newfangled forms of torture. This wouldn't have made much of a difference if I hadn't gone through my first magical maturity while my mind was so… detached. From what I'd experienced, the first magical maturity was an event that bonded my magic closer to the physical world, through the medium that my mind inhabited, that being my body. However I wasn't really inhabiting my body at the time, I was my Rc cells, and my Rc cells inhabited my body like a crew living in a ship. It was a tool for my Rc cells to survive, but it wasn't a part of them. This changed the effects. Rc cells were specifically created to produce magicals that could ignore the weaknesses of conventional wizards. Healing, durability, physical power and speed, inbuilt weapons that could be perfectly controlled with a thought, ghouls had everything that could make someone a perfect soldier. That included replacing the need for a wand. When Rc cells inhabit a wizard, possibly any living being with a magical core, they _change_ to perfectly suit the magical signature of the magic they live off of, and the effect of this is that they become a gestalt magical foci that inhabited the entire body. Magical foci were a… bridge, a window between the conceptual level of existence that magical cores exist on that can't normally interact with the physical world, giving my power a way down into reality where I could do things with it. Normally a wizard used a single focus, one wand, one staff, one whatever, but Rc cells unified _thousands_ of magical foci into a network that supported, and amplified magic beyond what the average magical focus could hope to match.

Then, I went through my first magical maturity, while my mind and soul were occupying said network. My magic bound itself to my Rc cells so tightly that each had… not a piece of my magical core, but each was its own access point to the source of mystic power I held. My soul and mind were caught up in the binding, and my mind was a part of my Rc cells that even I wasn't before. My Rc types were Ukaku and Rinkaku, both forms that are extraordinarily _distant_ from the concept of defense. In spite of this, when I assumed my Kakuja form, I could erase this weakness by fortifying the structure of my Rc cells with sheer strength of will. Kakuja by nature ignore the normal rules, regulations, and limitations of Rc cells, but my mind was intertwined with my body in a literal sense that I doubted anyone else could even comprehend.

This had the most prominent effects of removing two of my most glaring weaknesses, both in and out of combat. My mind was so closely intertwined with my body that I'd always know where it was, what it was doing, and it wasn't far off to say that there was an image in the back of my mind that knew everything about my body all at once, down to the cellular level. Because of this when I moved I knew how to step, how far I was stepping, what muscles to use, and how using said muscles would affect the rest of me with perfect clarity. While everyone else learned to walk by making the action muscle memory, I'd learned to walk by making it a conscious and measured effort based on the knowledge of my own body that I had. Over time, I'd be able to move around and do things with less and less concentration and effort, but for now it meant that I was no longer a clumsy fool in my own body. Secondly, my "body" in a loose sense was a network of magical foci. In response to being so closely linked to such a thing my magical core had strengthened itself many times over. That wasn't to say that I could suddenly output extreme amounts of energy and warp reality with huge amounts of magic. My body could handle outputting extreme amounts of magical power, so my magical core expanded its capacity to keep the same ratio between what I could handle, and how much I had to work with. I'd have to learn to use my magic in ever greater amounts just like anyone else, but I had a higher limit as to how powerful I could eventually become. In any case whereas before I was magically weak, and unable to muster the power to really do anything at all, if it weren't for my Rc cell network, I now had the power behind me to use magic without risking damage to myself.

I knew all this because I literally watched and felt it happen.

But excuse me for leaving behind the narrative, so as I was saying I touched Ayato on the chest and funneled a bit of magic into him, about as much as I could consciously pull from my magical core through my Rc cells. It wasn't all that much, because I could count the number of times I'd actively used magic on one hand, but it was enough that when I let it disperse into his body, I felt an image of the magical side of Ayato. Or rather, I should say the magical side of him that was starting to form. He had a magical core. This wasn't what was really surprising, it was that his magical core was _forming_ , which was… impossible, as far as I'd known. Magical cores were a part of your SOUL, it was something you always had, or never had. Apparently that fact was wrong, because even as I watched his magical core was coming into being, slowly but surely the way an infant forms in a womb. This raised even more questions. Was he always supposed to have a magical core, but it was kept from him, and then recently given back? This theory was temporarily discarded because he said it was triggered by tasting my blood. Was he developing one as a result of coming into contact with me? No, Touka and the others didn't have a magical core, the only one that did was… Kaneki, the only other ghoul that ate my flesh. Kaneki only started displaying the abilities of a magical ghoul after I force fed him my hand. So eating my flesh potentially gave ghouls magical abilities. Then… he had to have actually ate a piece of my magical core and then used it to grow his own. The idea was… horrifying, but potentially useful. If any ghoul that tasted my Rc cells became magical then I could give Touka magic as well, but I'd have to be perfectly careful not to let my enemies gain magical abilities the same way. Who knows how many tasted of my flesh as a result of Kanou's madness. And if those that gained magic that way could give magic to others in turn...

If Aogiri was about to gain an unknowable number of ghouls with _superpowers_ , then we needed to get out of the city that much sooner, because the magical world would notice if magic users started appearing in a city that was supposed to be purely mundane. Then, they'd realize that ghouls were all creations of Black Alchemy bolstered with Necromantic magic, and they'd throw all caution out the window to eradicate us all. Personally, I wanted to be able to live without being hunted at some point, and the magical world would most likely have ways of tracking us down once we'd been discovered. The only way that I could make sure that at least me and the others got out of the potential clusterfuck was to _get out of the potential clusterfuck_. We were leaving as soon as possible.

Which, while still possible, would be… finicky. The entire city of Kakurega was completely locked down to the outside by a wall both literal and figurative with the modern fortifications that the actual wall supported, and you had to have a blood test in order to leave through lawful channels. The walls were covered in guns, sensors, artillery, and other heavy-impact weapons that can kill ghouls from sheer overpowering force, so we weren't going to escape by making it over or through the wall. The moment we tried to break through the blockade, so to speak, the cameras would have our appearances in a database that would then be given to _every country in the United Nations_. So yeah, we'd have to be sneakier than just having me force our way out with my Kakuja form. The best way would be for me to teleport everyone out, but I wasn't sure if even my massively increased magical reserves could sustain that kind of stress. I'd have to teleport each of them out one at a time, which could mean up to ten individual teleports, including finding a place outside to take them all. Of course, the whole idea would have to be scrapped if I couldn't learn to teleport reliably in the first place, without shredding myself and whoever was teleporting with me. The others, though ghouls they were, didn't have my monstrous regeneration that lets me reform my entire body from nothing more than a viscous puddle. Going through my magical maturity gave me the raw power I'd need, but unlike before then I needed the control to match.

"You," I looked Ayato in the eye, "are gaining the ability to use magic." I didn't tell him anything of my thoughts. I wouldn't be telling him much of anything for a while. Being eaten by someone puts a bit of a dampener on things like trust.

"Magic?" he was skeptical. It response I drew out a bit of power and flicked forward at the air to help focus my intent. My magic shot from my finger and flicked him in the nose from a foot away.

"Yes, magic, is it really hard to believe that magic exists after being a ghoul your entire life and breaking a few laws of physics and biology every day?" I tilted my head with an amused sneer.

"...When you say it like that, not so much," he smiled sheepishly. I flicked him in the nose with magic, just because I could and I wanted to enjoy finally being able to _use_ the mystical power that I could bend to my every whim. Sort of.

"Anyways, I have no idea how long it's gonna take but eventually you won't need to eat, breathe, or anything, and you'll be able to cast spells and all that," I shrugged, "it's not far from what you'd expect. Focus, will, and things happen. At least that's what Kaneki and I have seen so far." He blinked in surprise.

"He's magical?" he looked honestly stunned at the revelation. Then, his palm hit his face and he sighed, "that actually explains a lot."

"Like what?" I deadpanned expectantly without missing a beat. He chuckled, becoming less and less intimidated by the little kid with a snake plushie by the minute.

"He was captured by Aogiri, and Jason tortured him. His cuffs kept coming undone, until Kanou finally lent us Quinque steel cuffs just so we could keep him locked up without knocking him out. I still have no idea how he broke out of those, but he killed Jason so there were no witnesses," Ayato simplified.

"So that's why he's not acting timid like a baby mouse anymore," I mused, "torture does have a pretty big effect on the mind. I'd know." Ayato grimaced at the reminder of what he'd partially taken part of. "So, you worked for Aogiri Tree?" I inquired. He nodded in confirmation, "Then tell me, who is Eto to Aogiri." I demanded the information with a glare, making him gulp and realize that he'd fallen off guard.

"She-she's the founder," he admitted. I felt my plan for vengeance fall apart. I'd just go and sniff out a lower level ghoul and kill her, then leave before I caught the attention of the rest of the organization. Except apparently Eto was the fucking FOUNDER of Aogiri Tree, and if I killed her I'd have all of Aogiri after me. Well, more after me than they already are, what with Kanou having a leading position there.

"Fuck," I cursed. Well, in that case… vengeance just really wasn't worth it. The saying goes "success is the best kind of revenge," and though I did want to paint the walls with her blood and rip her to pieces with my teeth and eat her until I could chew on her bones like toothpicks, I had… other priorities. I preferred living over getting revenge. It didn't matter if I killed her in revenge for helping Kanou capture me if I ended up running into a trap and placing myself back in his hands in the process. There was too much at stake, and frankly, I was utterly done with the entire situation. I had memories of living a normal life, of being able to just relax and do what I want without worrying that I was letting my enemies get too close or too strong in my absence. I'd been imprisoned in the hellhole of Kakurega my entire life, and I was done with it all. Instead of obsession over gaining freakish levels of power (even though I already had them as a Kakuja) all for the sake of revenge… I just wasn't going to give her the dignity or respect of being worth that kind of effort.

"Alright," I moved on, my grudge going deep down inside where it wouldn't cloud my judgment. "Now, tell me what Aogiri knows about the city's lockdown defenses."

XXXXXXX

I sent Ayato back downstairs when he was done filling me in on what Aogiri had seen of the city's walls and fortifications. It was pretty much just a more specific version of what everybody already knew. Get too close, and the entire wall starts shooting at you with enough weapons to kill SSS class ghouls. I guess that everyone had heard that I was awake because when I came downstairs a short while longer the whole group was camped out in the store. The CLOSED sign was facing outside the window, and because this was Anteiku that was something of a rarity, especially during the middle of the day like it was now.

"You're back," Kaneki smiled, the most comfortable with speaking. He, Nishiki, Touka, and Hinami were sitting at one table, Tsukiyama, Ayato, Yomo, and Yoshimura were sitting at another, and the rest of the staff were standing around, leaning against the bar or making themselves comfortable otherwise so that they could participate in whatever conversation had been going on.

"Yeah," I nodded, not even feeling like teasing him about stating the obvious. I was a little down from having my desire to see Eto brutally killed at my own hands crushed abruptly.

"How are you feeling?" Touka asked. She looked like she wanted to stand up and get closer, but didn't want to look foolish in front of the rest of the crowd. So, I headed over to her and hopped up into her lap. I'd grown, so my head was level with her chin from my perch in the middle of her lap with my back against her front. A few eyebrows rose on the newcomers at the sight of Touka letting someone sit on her lap, and not punching or kicking someone for the… indignity.

"...As good as I possibly can, after living in the good doctor's care. How long has it been?" I leaned my head back, just enjoying the warmth and the comfort just being where I was brought. She looked around the room, at how the eyes of literally everyone were on us… and decided that I was more important. She gently wrapped her arms around my waist, holding me to her just a little bit tighter.

"Eight months," she whispered, the whole matter weighing down on her all of a sudden as she came to terms with it. I sighed, hugging one of her arms in an attempt to show affection back.

"If I may," Purple Glory interjected, "perhaps a more comprehensive introduction might be in order?" The few others in the room that I hadn't met before nodded.

"My name is Zero," I told them. I felt Touka's surprise in the way she stiffened slightly, "I'm 13 years old, I'm a Kakuja, I can use magic, and I could rip you all to pieces before you managed to leave this room if I put my mind to it. Except maybe Kaneki, if he learns to teleport too. I'm close with Touka, and me and Kaneki are… I guess we're friends, but I didn't know him very long before I was captured." I didn't add anything more, as there wasn't actually much more to me. Combat ability, magical ability, and my growing bond with Touka, I hadn't had a life of my own long enough to have a life beyond those three things.

"Tsukiyama Shuu," Purple Glory introduced himself.

"I know," I deadpanned, "I was in the story when you met Kaneki the first time." That took a bit of the wind out of his sails. I already knew Ayato, so Yomo gave me his story, about how he had a sister that was killed by Arima and he hated the CCG as well as Aogiri Tree. He thanked me for killing Arima. Nishiki told me about how he'd met Kaneki, and then reformed after Tsukiyama tried killing his girlfriend.

"So," I redirected the conversation, amused by the fact that I was the center of attention among S rank ghouls even at my age, "why are we all here? Are you all Anteiku staff and you all just worked together to save Kaneki or me from them? Or are you guys sticking around for something else?"

"That… would actually be because of me," Kaneki answered, to my surprise. I looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I'm leaving Anteiku and forming a team to take on Aogiri Tree." I stared at him.

"Kaneki, it's good to know that even if you're brutally tortured and go through a much-needed personality change, you're still the same idiot that I beat up in a parking garage," I sighed, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. "First of all, I just got the memories of a bunch of Aogiri minions when I went Kakuja on their asses, and I can tell you that they have _thousands_ of members, and their disposable pawns are all above B rank. Everyone in Aogiri that matters is SS rank or above, you wouldn't be able to do anything to them even with a full team quite yet.

"I'm an SS rank, and Kaneki beat me," Ayato pointed out.

"Yes, but they've got Kanou working for them making an unlimited number of ghoul soldiers that most likely are S rank at least, and he fought you one-on-one. The bittersweet thing about reality is that nobody has to play fair like that," I shook my head. "The biggest problem isn't Aogiri at the moment. It isn't even the CCG, though they are in second place."

"Then who?" Nishiki scrunched his face behind his glasses, trying to think of what could be more dangerous than the doves.

"Okay, first things first," I backtracked. "Magic's real." Some looked skeptic, but the majority either already knew or believed me because I didn't have any reason to lie. "And if ghouls eat the Rc cells of magical ghouls like me, they become magical ghouls. Kanou has enough of my flesh to create an army of magical ghouls, and with them he could set himself up as ruler of the city in a day, and then continue his experiments with impunity as his army crushed everything with magical and physical might. The thing is, there's more magicals out there. I don't know much about them, but if they sense that much magic being used around here, they're gonna come find out what's using it. And if they find out about ghouls… they'll sterilize the city if that's what it takes to kill us all, innocent bystanders or not. Anyone with Rc cells will become a target, and they could trap us perfectly with magical barriers, and they have access to things that can kill us far easier than Quinque. Phoenixes, Basilisks, Dragons, all kinds of stuff exist, and they're higher on the food chain then normal ghouls. I could probably fight my way through some of that, but if they set even twenty dragons on the city at once…" I trailed off, not wanting to think about being so helpless right after escaping from a prison. The entire room looked uncomfortable.

"Then, you're saying that at any moment the city could turn into a deathtrap," Kaneki breathed, trying to comprehend that level of systematic genocide.

"For creatures like us made from Black Alchemy and Necromancy? They'd go any length to wipe us off the face of the planet. We're literally the monsters in their nightmares," I explained. "Ghouls were made by a dark wizard, and he… left a bit of general information in his Rc cells for any magicals that became ghouls. I don't actually know a whole lot except what he wanted me to know about ghouls, but luckily that included the fact that the magical world fears our kind as much as the mundane one does. And before anyone wants me to prove it, I already did, and I'm not doing it again so you're gonna have to trust me and screw you if you don't."

"Then we have to get away before that happens," Touka guessed, "fuck, you're not back a day and things are already going to hell. Good to have you back, brat." She chuckled ruefully, hugging me a little tighter for a moment, to show me that she didn't really mean her sarcastic statement.

"Yeah, we gotta skip town before the inquisition gets here and burns us all at the stake," I confirmed. The room was quiet for a time.

"Are… are you all actually taking this seriously?" Tsukiyama spoke up incredulously. Touka scoffed at him, but didn't say anything more.

"Considering that I can use magic myself, yes," Kaneki crossed his arms across his chest.

"Look," I decided that I didn't want to screw around with non-believers any more than I had to, "you can believe me or not, I don't care, but if you do and you want to get out of the city with me then I'll try to make it happen." A few of them shrugged.

"So how are you gonna get us out?" Touka asked me.

"The plan is to teleport us out," I announced in response, "I need either a line of sight to my destination or I need to have been there before. If we go downtown and get on a skyscraper's roof, then I might be able to see over the wall far enough for us to escape." Touka nodded, thinking about how that would work. "The problem is…" I continued, "I'm not very good at teleporting, and I'll need to practice before then. Even with a bit of experience under my belt you could get injured by the teleport. I've teleported twice before and both times you could've mopped up what was left of me. Luckily, we're ghouls so we can survive things normally fatal but I want to reduce the damage to as little as possible beforehand." Kaneki frowned, picturing the bloody effects of my teleportation.

"How much time do we have?" Yoshimura interjected.

"A few months, maybe longer," I shrugged, "it depends on how much attention is already on the city."

"Then we should begin preparations," Yoshimura nodded. Tsukiyama, Yomo, and the older waiter's of Anteiku gaped at Yoshimura. The old ghoul shook his head, and they settled down, but my interest and suspicion had caught the event. In any case I had more pressing things to worry about.

"Where will we go?" Kaneki thought ahead.

"I was thinking of Tokyo," I told him.

XXXXXXX

"Okay, let me try," I nodded to the others, namely Touka, Kaneki, Nishiki, and Ayato, and I snapped my focus to the other side of the back room of Anteiku. Power rushed into the network of Rc cells in my body, and I _moved_. Teleporting with magic was like squeezing myself between whatever was between myself and my destination and moving at extreme sudden speeds. Essentially, I was taking the space that I occupied, and instead of moving myself I was moving where I was, if that makes sense. By going between the physical matter in my way I could ignore friction and physical barriers like walls and the like, and by moving the space that I occupied I could ignore the normal laws of inertia and acceleration, going from motionless to moving at a speed that was essentially instantaneous, without splattering my body everywhere from the sudden movement and sudden lack of movement.

Of course, the "without splattering" part only applies after I've got enough control.

I reappeared with a loud crack on the other side of the room, my arm _disappearing_ from the elbow down, and my organs and body scrambled as usual. It took a few moments for my body to heal, and then I teleported back to where I started, losing all of my skin and pieces of my muscles. Yeah, really wasn't something that would be safe for a normal child my age. When I healed I looked to them.

"This is going to take a while," I groaned, teleporting again.

"Are you sure you don't want to let me help?" Kaneki asked.

"Okay, have you tried using magic since you were tortured and your personality changed?" I answered with a question that sounded unrelated. When he shook his head no (he might have said something but I teleported and temporarily lost my sense of hearing while my head reformed), I smirked. "Yeah, magic is linked to your mind and soul really closely, so right now your magic should still be shifting to suit your new personality, and until then it'll be harder to control. So yeah, you can't help with teleporting. It's as hard as it looks to pull off."

"Damn," he actually cringed when I teleported and reappeared without the entire left side of my body. "You sure you can keep up that kind of regeneration?" He asked me as I balanced on my one remaining foot while the left side of my body was reformed from what looked like a latticework of blood, but was actually Rc cells replicating themselves and doing their best to refill the form of their host body.

"You'd be able to do the same," I told him, the left side of my face still covered in a rapidly receding layer of blood. Luckily, I was practicing in sweatpants and nothing else, and I hadn't left them behind yet, but it was a little weird seeing my leg grow back down the leg of my pants. When I was completely healed, I teleported again, though this time there was a lack of pain. I looked over myself, wondering what had happened. I heard a stifled laugh, and I looked to them to see them all trying to keep me from hearing them laugh. "What?" I spat. Nishiki pointed to my head, and when I touched my hands to my skull, I realized that I'd left all of my hair behind.

Fuck.

XXXXXXX

So, it's really hard being intimidating while you're a 13 year old that's small for your age, and bald on top of that. The first time I walked into the main room of Anteiku every single occupant burst out laughing, including the staff and the patrons. I stole one of Yoshimura's hats off his head, and even though it was too big for me I started wearing it so they'd stop teasing me about my head.

The city was going to hell around us.

The CCG was terrified, after finding the corpse of Kishou Arima, because that meant that they either had an active SSS rank ghoul that they already knew about, or a new one that they didn't know about. They had investigators on every corner of every street and Rc scanners were being installed in the doors of public places like libraries, zoos, governmental buildings, and the skyscrapers downtown. They'd pulled high-ranking investigators from all over Japan to scour the city for ghouls. They'd started spraying the streets with Rc suppressants and diving on the ghouls that were paralysed by the chemical. Luckily for us, they'd started in the south where ghouls were more common, and Anteiku was in the north, but it would only be something like a month before the city was completely hostile to all of us.

So we had a time limit.

I was making good progress with teleporting reliably. I quickly realized that I simply didn't have and wouldn't have enough control of my magic to teleport perfectly, so I was focusing on ending up exactly where I wanted to go. It meant that I couldn't bring anyone that didn't have a ghoul's regeneration with me, because I might leave big chunks of them behind, but since all of us were ghouls, that was alright. As long as I could teleport and end up where I wanted to go then that would be enough for us. Nishiki at first wanted to bring his girlfriend with us, but I told him that she was human, and because of that she wouldn't be safe to live with us until we had somewhere safe for ourselves. Reluctantly, he agreed to leave her in Kakurega, as long as we came back for her the moment that she wouldn't be endangered by being with us. The group that was leaving was actually a bit small, only composing of me, Touka, Kaneki, Nishiki, Ayato, and Hinami. All of the others were either the skeptics like Tsukiyama, or were like Yoshimura and had legitimate reasons to stay. He'd told me that he had a daughter in the city that he didn't want to completely abandon, so he declined the option of leaving the city with me. I didn't really care either way.

The others went out and bought duffle bags to fill with clothes and sleeping bags and things like that, so that we wouldn't be completely helpless outside the city. None of us knew how to drive, so we'd be walking the whole way. Kakurega was west of Tokyo, in the mountains between the capital and the industrial city of Nagoya. It was nestled just a bit south of Mt. Daimugen, and to get to Tokyo we'd have to trek at least 50 miles, some of which would be through mountain country. I didn't know how much of the stuff would make it through teleporting with me, but anything we could manage to hold on to would be a massive help.

Anteiku was doing its best to stay as low-profile as they could, even traveling to other districts and ignoring territory borders in an attempt to keep attention away from the 20th ward. Unlike Kaneki and I, they still couldn't live without eating human flesh. Ayato would have the ability someday soon, but it was still in its infancy so he couldn't completely cut himself off quite yet. I tried funneling magic to them to feed their Rc cells, but… it didn't work. There was some problem with incompatibility with their Rc cells and my magic, so they'd be full for a while, even a week, but eventually the magic would leak out and they'd have to go back for another meal. It was like caffeine to them. It could make them _think_ that they were full, but their Rc cells didn't actually… digest… my magic, so they weren't actually getting anything they needed to live.

Two weeks before the doves were scheduled to start exterminating the ghouls of the 20th ward, we acted.

I wore my usual black cargo pants, purple tank top, and this time a purple hoodie with a black Kakugan drawing on the back in case it got cold while we were traveling. My mask gleamed metallically underneath the hood. Heavy boots were on my feet, tied up my ankle. I had a big duffle bag hanging behind me by its straps, one of my arms through each strap on either side of it so that it hung behind me vertically and didn't disturb my balance. I had both of Arima's Quinque in the case in my left hand. Touka was next to me, wearing a tight black combat outfit that didn't hinder her agility. She had a different mask on now, a black one styled after a breather mask. Kaneki was on my other side, in a crisp white dress shirt with a black tie, vest, slacks, and dress shoes. His asylum-themed mask contrasted with the clean elegance of his outfit starkly. Ayato was next to Kaneki, wearing a black rabbit mask and his combat suit of baggy martial arts pants, a skin-tight shirt, and boots that went halfway up his calves, a style that left him perfectly mobile. Nishiki was next to Touka, wearing a cloak-like coat and loose pants, and he wore a snake-like mask. Hinami was behind us, wearing a doll-like mask with a featureless white face and another cape-cloak. They all had duffle bags too, but theirs were on the ground next to them. We were standing on top of a building in the 4th ward, feeling a bit weak from the small amount of Rc suppressant that wafted up to us from the ground. We were staring towards the 1st ward, which was untouched by Rc suppressants, because there weren't any ghouls that close to the CCG's headquarters.

I ran my eyes over the small group with a feeling that I came to realize was gratitude and pride. They looked magnificent, and I felt happy that they considered me a part of them. I was grateful that they trusted me enough to believe that what I was saying about the magicals was the truth. They could've hidden from the Rc suppressants and investigators by hunkering down in the 24th ward underground, but instead they were going to help me get us away by using one of the most well-defended buildings in existence. My gaze paused over Touka for a while. She was the most important thing in existence to me, and though I knew that she didn't need protecting or things like that (she was a man-eating ghoul for God's sake), I wanted to keep her from getting a single scratch in the upcoming fight. She looked… good… in her new combat outfit, and I didn't want it ruined.

At the end of my train of thought I was a bit confused about my own thoughts, but I put aside the matter until I had the time to waste on it. The stakes were too high for distractions. We were about to attack CCG tower with a ragtag group of ghouls, one of which was C rank and a _child._

But sometimes all you need is a good loud roar and a beast out of nightmares to get the job done.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Chapter 6! Things are about to drastically change.**_

 _ **And to clear up any confusion, in canon Tokyo Ghoul everything happens in… well, in Tokyo, like its name. In the Chimaeraverse here ghouls live in a city called Kakurega that I've created because I needed/wanted to. So yeah, hope that clears things up for anyone still confused.**_

 _ **By the way, just wanted to comment that if you search for the story "Jaune and The Games We Play" you'll find a fic that's a bit longer than a million words and is really too well written to be called a fanfiction. It's fucking amazing.**_

 _ **Next chapter things will be moving away from any canon events! Unexplored seas, ho!**_


	9. Chapter 7: The Houdini Plan

**Chapter 7: The Houdini Plan**

"Hinami, stay back, but follow as close behind us as you can without being caught up in the fighting. If you get involved anyways, use this," I handed Narukami to Hinami, IXA in Touka's hand. "Kaneki, Ayato, Nishiki, you're in charge of keeping the doves off the roof so they don't see us teleport away. Touka, you're in charge of securing the site we teleport to. Hinami, you're going second." The boys nodded, knowing that their higher combat ability was best suited to holding the doves off while I teleported us out, and it wasn't out of any favoritism that I was teleporting Touka first. Hinami nodded shyly, not quite comfortable with the serious atmosphere.

"The doves are going to be all over us the moment we make it through the Rc cell scanners," Ayato observed, seeing humans going in and out of the huge building.

"They should still be crippled by losing Arima," I countered, "charge through and prioritize getting past them instead of killing them and we'll make it. I'm going to use my Kakuja, that should soak up attention much more than a few normal ghouls." I ran my eyes over the building, my Rc cell-enhanced vision letting me catch glimpses of the building's occupants through the glare on the windows.

"Let's break shit," I cued, hopping off the building's roof to land in an alley. Immediately I was hit by the smell of airborne Rc suppressants, but I stopped breathing, and the effects were muted to a slight numbing feeling on the outer layer of my skin. The others landed behind me, but they got the effects harder than me because they needed to breathe. Kaneki held his breath too, but the others had to breathe in the suppressants. Luckily, normal ghouls weren't actually paralysed by the suppressants, merely weakened, and Kaneki and I had a plan for that once the whole mad plan _truly_ started. We walked out of the alley, masks away so we looked human, besides our obsession with dark colors and the stuffed duffel bags. Slowly, we approached the huge tower that was the CCG's headquarters.

We made it close to the building, and the air steadily cleared of the Rc suppressing agent. They didn't need chemical weapons with all of their investigators so close by. When we were within a hundred feet of the tower the metallic smell of Rc suppressants was gone, and the non-magical of us were recovering our supernatural abilities. Doves were flooding through the area, and people were coming to the tower to be passed through the Rc cell scanner gates. If the gates didn't go off, your name was cleared of suspicion. We got in line. We chatted about coffee all the way to the gates as we waited in line, acting nonchalant and normal.

"Zero's not been too shabby at making coffee himself recently," Kaneki complimented me. I beamed at him.

"You've been teaching the brat?" Nishiki raised an eyebrow. Yeah, Nishiki was an asshole but he'd stop saying it soon enough. I wanted to let him dig himself further into a hole and then I wanted to see his face when he realized who he was calling "brat."

"He's a fast learner," Kaneki shrugged, "and he wanted to be able to make coffee like the rest of us. Besides, he stopped me from eating my best friend Hide, so I still owe him. Hide's human, so he's still living here, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get back into contact with him once everything calms down."

"Yeah…" Nishiki nodded sadly, thinking about his girlfriend. He was taking leaving her a bit hard, which was part of the reason that I wasn't flaying him alive for calling me a brat. We trailed off for a bit.

"You guys interested in any more Quinque?" I spoke up on a spur of the moment decision, and the humans in the line couldn't hear me over their own discussions. We still had Narukami and IXA, but the other Quinque that I tried to keep dried up and died without their holding cases. I thought it was a good idea to have weapons so that we could use the Rc type advantages to beat even our weaknesses. Like how Nishiki is weak to Touka because she's an Ukaku, but if Nishiki had a Koukaku Quinque, then he'd have an advantage over her. Besides, variety in combat style never hurts a fighter.

"... Maybe an Ukaku," Kaneki ventured, thinking along the same lines as I and how he could combat his Rc type's weakness.

"If we all had Quinque we could avoid using our Kagune and getting recognised," Ayato mused, agreeing with me partly just to try and keep me happy. I must've really terrified him.

"Then we'll pull through the Quinque dev lab on our way up. It's on the third highest floor," I cracked my neck.

"Still think we shoulda just taken a normal skyscraper…" Nishiki grumbled.

"Yoshimura and the others are staying," I glared, "Yes, we could've just used any skyscraper, but Yoshimura let me stay at Anteiku for free. I owe him, so we're gonna hamstring the CCG's power here by breaking their HQ. After that we're leaving, and Yoshimura ands I are even."

"Fine, fine," Nishiki grumbled. He wasn't really against me or anything, he was just worried that after attacking the _world_ headquarters of the CCG something might get traced back to Kimi, and she might be killed or harmed in an effort to get to Nishiki. He'd consider it a weakness to admit it though.

We finally reached the Rc cell scanner, and our conversation halted. We all fingered our masks inside our pockets as we neared the end point of our discussion. The plan was fairly simple. We were walking straight into the lion's den and tearing every last one of the assholes to pieces on our way to the roof. I stepped through the scanner first, making the machine light up like a Christmas tree and the alarms in the building to all go off at once. The investigators only saw me emerge through the gateway with a silvery lion mask with an unsettling toothy grin. My Kagune erupted from my back, but I didn't use my Kakuja yet. The others followed suit, and as a unit we burst into the most heavily defended building in Kakurega. My five purplish-black Rinkaku whipped through the air and slithered past the investigators' attempts at blocking with their Quinque, the tips of my blades limbs only piercing the few inches into their necks needed to kill, and then I moved on.

Ayato was proving his worth. He had learned to curve the flight of his Ukaku shards with magic, and he was using his new ability ruthlessly. He leapt around the room in a blur to anyone not a ghoul, literally kicking through people in a bloody show of power, and his Ukaku shards flying around like a deadly storm of glass shards or shrapnel, his magical trajectory control giving him an element of unpredictability that quickly stained the floors red.

Touka fought similarly to her brother, except her fighting style was more focused on hand-to-hand combat, and she occasionally used her Ukaku like a blade wrapped around her arm reminiscent of a Koukaku. She overpowered the weak investigators we were faced with with sheer dexterity and flexibility. One moment she was about to be impaled on a Bikaku Quinque, and the next she spun like a top and drove her fingertips into the soft, soft flesh of the investigator's trachea.

Nishiki was pulling his weight too, moving fluidly and smoothly and with his nimble Bikaku he could _slither_ past any defense and bisect his opponent. I'd had my doubts about the irritable ghoul but he was proving himself much more reliable than he seemed.

Hinami was hanging back, her Koukaku defending her from projectiles, and her Rinkaku lancing forward to handle the stragglers that the others missed. Her regeneration wasn't as fast as the rest of us quite yet despite being a Rinkaku, so I didn't want her getting injured any more than necessary in case we needed to combat something unexpected. Regardless, she was acting the role of a support sniper flawlessly.

And the spearhead of our group was made of Kaneki and I. We were a fucking _force of nature_. Kaneki was more in tune with his Kagune than any ghoul I'd ever seen or heard of outside of me, and he was using his eight Rinkaku blades like… well, like actual limbs. He enhanced his mobility with the red tentacles and kept his balance utterly perfect even while hurtling through the air in a triple sideways flip or whatever crazy acrobatic shit he was pulling off. Not only was he simply _too fast_ for the investigators to effectively defend themselves every time he had the right opportunity he'd conjure a six inch long nail and fire it at a significant portion of the speed of sound. When he really saw an opportunity, he'd fire _arcs of raw magic_ to cut straight through whatever they hit from whatever limb he wanted, and he had twelve limbs to choose from. All at once he was fighting _tens_ of investigators, every movement killing at least one of them with either a Kagune or a nail or a blade of raw magic.

As for me… well… I used my pair of Kagune to their utmost efficiency, and used blasts of raw magic to _push_ and flatten anything that I didn't feel like wasting time on. I was on all fours, my Ukaku peppering the investigators and either killing them if they were weak or occupying them as they tried to dodge or defend. Then, I'd charge in and take them out with a single swing of my Rinkaku. I was operating on a whole new level from the last time I'd fought with my normal Kagune, and I doubt that I'd have much trouble matching Amon and Mado now. With my new ability to actually control my body with a minimum level of dexterity in a fight I was exponentially more dangerous. I could dodge, retreat, advance, and position myself perfectly to place an Ukaku shard between their eyes or separate them into any number of pieces with my Rinkaku. When I saw clumps of investigators together, I'd whip a hand, leg, or Rinkaku tentacle at them and launch a huge dome-like wave of purple magic that would fling the group of humans backwards and reduce them to a flat paste against the nearest wall.

I stabbed my hands knuckle-deep into a rib cage and have a strong heave. With the wet rip of separating flesh and the sickly crunch of shattered bone I ripped the last of the investigator's entire torso apart, and as the two pieces of the human died, so died the last of the screams. I was covered in blood, staining my silvery mask bright red right along with the rest of me.

"Stairs are over here!" Nishiki called, and the others ran for the way to the roof. I smirked underneath the fanged grin of my mask, and my Kagune started to wrap around me like the arms of a clingy lover.

XXXXXXX

"They've taken the foyer, squads seven through eight are to head to the elevators to keep them from making it to the VIPs on the upper floors. Squad nine, go to the stairs to keep them from doing the same," the CCG chairman commanded.

"Sir!" came the obedient response from across the line. Around the chairman were the highest ranking investigators in the building. The CCG had several thousand men to its name just _in the building_ , what with the rest of the world's investigators coming to help eliminate all of the man-eating creatures, but they'd sent all of the higher ranked investigators out into the city to help with the Cleansing operation, and so for all of their numbers all of the men in the building were nothing more than cannon fodder. All of the CCG had thought that the CCG headquarters had a scary enough reputation to keep itself safe, along with the literal army of operatives in the building, but then all of a sudden a team with four S class ghouls and two A class ghouls attacked them at their supposedly safe bastion from ghouls.

"Funnel them into the training chambers on the third floor, there we will be able to hold them inside long enough for the Special Class Investigators to arrive!" the chairman ordered further, the same obedient response coming across the radio connection.

"Sir, investigators Shinohara and Kuroiwa are currently the closest, they will arrive in ten minutes," a secretary advised the chairman, who nodded in acknowledgment.

Suddenly the entire room _shook_ as a dual-toned shriek blasted through the room loud enough to pulverise the glass and stop the humans from hearing for several seconds afterwards. As the leader of the CCG tried to get a hold of what was happening in his tower, a long chain of destructive rumbles and booms progressively got loud enough for even their damaged hearing to detect. The table they were sitting around rattled against the floor, and they felt the vibrations of explosions and impacts in their bones.

"Chimaera…" the chairman's face tightened into a pale grimace.

XXXXXXX

Have I ever mentioned how fucking awesome it is to be a Kakuja? I mean, I was surrounded by at least fifty investigators all told, and all of them had Quinque, and they were all charging at me at their top speed, trying to either hold me off or strike at a vital point. Morons, I'm a ghoul, a magical ghoul at that, I could walk away from a nuclear blast with my level of regeneration. I unleashed a storm of Ukaku shards that popped their heads like watermelons shot with a cannonball, and tore through more of the building's structure with my claws, tail, and jaws. Yeah, I'm kind of glad my Kakuja doesn't have a sense of taste, because I would be incredibly familiar with the taste of drywall. I was headed towards the Quinque production labs on the middle-ish floors, slaughtering and destroying on my way. With a bit of magic that I picked up over the last few days I lit the building on fire by channeling a bit of power through the flame-like structure of my Ukaku and touching it to what I wanted to burn. I wasn't good enough yet to fling fireballs from my tail like I could with the larger Ukaku spike that I affectionately named the Pile Driver, but it was enough to drive the puny humans even further into terror as my ten foot tall monstrous form tore through them like a bull in a china shop.

I ran forwards on all four of my legs, my tail trailing behind me like an aquatic snake. I suddenly lunged forward with my right paw and my claws stabbed straight through a door and into the torso of an investigator that was trying to hide. I brought the gurgling human to my jaws, and bit off his head and upper body, his arms and lower body falling to the ground with an increasingly familiar wet plop. A quick ingestion of memories and I knew exactly how to get to the armory. I turned and shoved myself through the weak walls, my horns and skull boring through the materials with a bit of pressure. I pulled myself through the hole, and then did the same thing again, except with the ceiling. I barreled down the hallways, terrorising the investigators that were realising that I was on a floor they didn't expect me on. It's not like I didn't do the same fucking thing back on the day I killed Arima, but noooooooo the humans don't learn. All the better for me in the end, I guess. I lowered my head and gored an investigator in the gut, spearing my right horn a good foot and a half past his lower back. He screamed. I was struck with a bit of sadistic humor, and I did the same with my other horn, and I roared as well, but made the noise sound mockingly like the pair of humans screaming on my lance-like horns on each side of my head. I'm pretty sure I scared more investigators by snickering at the sound of the two dying fools on each side of my head than I did by actually roaring and sending a magic-enhanced sonic pulse through the building.

I crashed through a thick metal door, using the tried and true method of blunt force impact to bust through the locks and hinges that held the huge metal panel in place. It was supposed to protect the CCG's armory from anything that could enter the building, but Kakuja got to break a lot of rules, things like the Law of Conservation of Mass was one of them. The armory was empty, as none of the investigators had any reason to be there with the building being invaded and all, and because all investigators were now required to keep their Quinque on them at all times. This armory was simply a stockpile to replace Quique when they're broken or need to be repaired. I immediately went for a stack of the mass-produced Tsunagi Bikaku. I reached forward with my humanoid front paws, rising to balance on my hind legs, and I picked up a pair of cases that had a handful of the identical blades in them each. In front of the approaching CCG forces, I swallowed the Quinque cases whole. Let them figure that one out. I sent an Ukaku barrage their way to keep them busy, and pounced on a set of 56 knives labeled Scorpion all in one case, and I swallowed those too. I grabbed a pair of unidentified cases from the Koukaku and Ukaku ranks and ate them as well, and then a case labeled 13s Jason and one last one. That was about as much as I could store comfortably while still retaining my full combat abilities. I moved the cases through the formless fleshy substance that made up my Kakuja until they were stored inside where its stomach would be if it wasn't a Kakuja, which was just behind my real body inside its upper torso. I turned to the investigators, and growled.

Next step of the plan was to trash the elevators, so I released an especially strong burst of raw magic through my overpowered amplifying magical focus that was my Kakuja's entire body and reduced the humans in the hallway to a single large pleasant red stain along the no-longer-spotless white walls. I ran on just my hind legs this time, my talons digging into the floor and hurtling me forward at a speed no creature my size had any right to move at. Seconds later I was by the elevators, and I tore the shafts open with a bit of Rinkaku tail violence. Lucky me, the elevators were all on a lower floor, so all it took to take them out was to cut the cables that suspend them from the motor at the top. One long, satisfying slice later and air was sucked into the elevator shafts as the elevators themselves fell to the bottom of the shafts. There wasn't any crash like I was hoping for, but modern elevators have safety features to catch a falling elevator so my craving for breaking things wasn't satisfied. Sighing with my real body inside my Kakuja, squeezed myself into the elevator shaft, and realised that I was going to have a lot of trouble with the next part of my improvised plan to get to the roof. I was struck by inspiration, and I spun my tail around underneath me like a screw or a ballerina's ribbon, and I was pushed up the elevator shaft as my tail bit into and slid across the walls of the shaft. Ah, ingenuity. The shaft was a bit cramped, but as long as I kept my arms and legs relaxed I could fit. Another one of the few things that sucks about being a Kakuja. Cannot: fit into enclosed spaces like normal doorways and elevators.

Instead of exiting the elevator shaft the normal way through the doors to the top floor, I merely used a bit more magic to fling the roof of the elevator shaft straight upwards and away from my like they'd been hit with the force of a speeding 18 wheeler. I was birthed from the elevator shaft onto the roof, where the other ghouls were ready, checking their bags to make sure that everything was strapped on properly after they fought their way to the roof.

"That sucked, I'm never doing that again," Nishiki grumbled.

"That was fun" Touka ignored him, having enjoyed the physical exertion of combat. She was grinning and breathing heavily, but had her duffle bag strapped to her back properly. I then did something that I knew that I could do, but had never done before. I let my real body emerge and separate from my Kakuja form. That was _disorienting_. I suddenly had two entirely different points of view, one from my real body and one from my Kakuja, and I could control both independently. Since my mind inhabited my Rc cell network more than my actual physical body, it didn't feel lopsided or uneven, both were my body and I could use both, and feel magic to either in equal quantities. My Kakuja was immediately placed at the top of the stairs to keep watch, and it spat back out the Quinque cases. Each of them grabbed a case, and I held on to the case for Narukami and IXA. My real body turned to look out over the edge of the city towards the east. With just a moment's hesitation, I teleported away with a sharp crack of displaced air. I snapped back into conventional reality a few hundred feet above the air a significant distance from the city. I let myself fall, and landed on my legs, fracturing every bone between my toes and my skull along my legs and spine. A moment later I was healed. I dropped my duffle bag, and looked around myself, making sure to get the place in my memory. It was a calm place in the green forests of the mountain range east of Kakurega, and it was perfect for our needs. I sniffed the scent, spun in a circle, listened to the noises, and when I was done, I closed my eyes and thought about the roof of the CCG tower. I vanished with another crack.

I reappeared on the tower missing my left hand, but that wasn't important. I grabbed Touka and teleported us both to the spot outside the city. We reappeared without legs below our knees, but we could both heal from that. I set her down to let her slower regeneration work its magic as my legs healed in less than a second. I popped back to the tower, and took grabbed Hinami and teleported again without letting my ear regenerate. This time nothing got left behind, so I left Hinami with Touka, and then popped back to get Ayato and Nishiki, losing my left arm and several internal organs in the process. Nishiki lost his right hand and Ayato lost his lungs and heart, but his growing magical core gave him the power to heal from that, so I popped back to Kaneki in time for investigators to spill out onto the roof of the tower and form a defensive line against my Kakuja as it stood motionless and faced them. I teleported Kaneki, and then returned for my second body. I lost my head and my right arm on the last teleport, so I leaned against my Kakuja's hind leg as if I didn't have a care in the world. It stared at the investigators without a single movement. They got to watch as my body grew itself new neural tissue and reconstituted my entire brain and head without getting the slightest visible reaction from me. When it was finished I stared at the investigators, my real face bared for their perusal.

"Nice to meet you all, my name is Zero. I know it's a bit underwhelming, but then again Kanou's never had good naming sense," I struck up a discussion on a whim, feeling a need for a bit of closure on the city that I'd spent my whole life in. The stiffened when they heard Kanou's name.

"You were raised by Dr. Kanou?" the guy that was obviously their leader gasped. Shinohara, I think his name was.

"Yeah, nice guy, did you know that he loves to pick up random human children and experiment on them for years until he finally turns them into ghouls? No? It's a wonderful passtime, I can _personally attest to it_." I sneered. I wasn't quite sure why I was telling them my life story, but… somewhere deep down something was telling me that if I could set them on Aogiri tree then I would have less work some time in the future. Deep in my mind that same still glassy poll released a pulse of… something into my mind. It was an urge, a feeling of need that I couldn't help but trust completely. It was terrifying, but I'd deal with a strange guiding force in my head that gave me visions on occasion when I wasn't surrounded by people that wanted to gut me like a fish.

"That bastard!" Shinohara snarled, and a few other investigators grimaced.

"Why didn't you come to the CCG? We could've kept you at Cochlea and you could've lived in peace?" some random newbie asked.

"Yes, because if I told the CCG I used to be human without this kind of fanfare and proof," here I gestured to the burning building below us, "then they'd believe me on principle wouldn't they?" I grinned brightly, the sarcasm dripping from my mouth. My Kakuja suddenly moved, making the whole human population of the roof flinch, as it shrunk and lost its shape, retracting into my back and disappearing. They stared at the disrespect for the laws of science I just showed, as a two-ton monster had just vanished into the body of a body of a 13 year old.

"Why would you kill humans?" Shinohara asked, his eyes actually tearing up in pity.

"Hmm…" I made a show of thinking about it, "well, let me make a list:" I counted off on my fingers. "One, I was raised by a psychotic doctor that tortured me around the clock. Two, every single person that's ever showed me any kind of kindness has been a ghoul. Three, I've had to fight to protect said ghouls that I care about, because you people are committed to the genocide of an entire race. Four, humans are fucking delicious, did you know that?" I grinned at them, showing them a grin that didn't belong on a face as young and "innocent" as mine. A few of them shivered or took a step back in revulsion or horror. "Five, I gain the memories of every human I eat, and you know what?" I raised an eyebrow, and then continued in a low and insidious tone with my hands falling back to my sides. "Every. Last. One. Fucking deserved it."

"You killed my brother!" an investigator to my right yelled angrily. "He has a child, his wife is dead!"

"And he was a pedophile," I cut in, "he fantasised about his daughter every other day and raped women from the streets at night thinking it was his divine right for protecting them from ghouls." My expression didn't change from a completely emotionless mask. "Look, let's not get into the 'who's got the moral high ground' game here, because we both are willing to go to any extreme to make sure the other side dies if that's what it comes to. I can tell you that you won't be having any troubles from me ever again, I don't want to live my life being hunted. However, there's a ghoul group called Aogiri Tree, you may have heard of it, and it's going to become a very, very big threat very soon. You may have cleansed the 23 wards of Kakurega on the surface, but the 24th ward was made by ghouls and goes deep under the city where even your suppressants don't reach. They'll be back and unless you've got enough power to fight off more than one of me all at once, you're all going to die painfully. I'm just satisfying what little honorable pride that I still have, so… yeah, good luck trying not to die." I turned and was squeezed with my magic, leaving the building's roof with a sharp crack. Nothing but corpses, flames, and the grieving was left.

XXXXXXX

I popped into the forest and stumbled, until my right arm grew back yet again. I didn't let it show during our operation, but exhaustion was really starting to set in. I'd just used a monumental amount of magic, and only my Rc cell network enabled me to keep using magic past the first few raw magic blasts I'd used near the entrance. If my casting wasn't so naturally efficient I'd have collapsed from the strain before ever making it to the roof. I had an extraordinarily large magical core on top of that, but it still wouldn't be enough to support me through even one more pair of teleports between the forest and the CCG tower. My magic was literally my life force considering my species, so this was the absolute bottom of the gas tank for me.

They were going through their duffle bags and making sure that everything had come out of my teleports properly. So far, it looked like everything was where it was supposed to be. All the Quinque cases were working properly, and they were passing human mean to Nishiki, Hinami, and Touka to start their regeneration. Kaneki was sniffing the air, and looking back west towards the city. He wasn't going to find a trace of the CCG following us, but really it couldn't hurt to make sure that we were alone. It was going to take us a few weeks to get to Tokyo, and all of the non-magical ghouls had eaten before we left so none of us should starve during that time. We were going to run there with superhuman speed while we had the cover of the forest, but when we started to near the capital we'd need to move to the roads and we'd have to slow down to a more reasonable pace. For now, we were free from being hunted for the first time in all of our lives (save for Kaneki, but he doesn't count). I stumbled over and sat down next to Touka, leaning heavily on her. I was still coming down from the adrenaline rush that carried me through the whole shebang, and she was still allowing her new legs synchronize with the rest of her biology. She chuckled, and punched me in the shoulder.

"Let's do that again sometime, _that_ was how to get back at those assholes," Touka smiled widely.

"They'll have a lot harder time keeping control of the city now, even with their Rc cell suppressants," Nishiki shrugged.

"It just felt good to kill some of those murderers," Ayato added non-comitantly. Hinami was holding his hand as she steadied herself. Normally ghouls don't really gain respectable combat power until they were in their later teens, but Hinami pushed herself and her deadly Kagune to match the rest of our group. She managed, but it was exhausting for the girl, as she was still only 14 for the next few months and didn't have the reserves of stamina to fight at that level as she was then. Ayato looked like he was happy to help the girl, so I turned my attention back to the group as a whole.

"Alright, boots on," I commanded, and we all took hiking boots out of the duffle bags, stashed the Quinque cases in the duffle bags in place of the boots, and after putting on the softest and thickest socks we could find we laced on the boots, strapped on the duffle bags, and started our trek. We were ghouls, we had nothing to gain from resting. We ran at an even, easy pace that would've matched an Olympic sprinter that we could keep up without really expending any energy. Ayato gave Hinami a piggyback ride because she wasn't up to running quite yet. Kaneki and Touka took the lead, with me behind them, followed by Ayato carrying Hinami and Nishiki lagged into the rear. We scared off a lot of wildlife as we raced through the vegetation, and it was kind of funny to see deer and birds fleeing in terror from us. It even got a chuckle out of Nishiki once, but he was still feeling angry at having to leave his girlfriend. I decided then and there that someday, when we had a safe place to live, I'd take him to go find Kimi so he and she could be reunited. I'd never seen loyalty on such a scale and I didn't want it to fail like my cynical mind expected it to.

We slept during the night, setting up sleeping bags in hammocks to keep us out of the weather and off the ground. By the third day even Nishiki couldn't help but join in our conversations to break the silence he was going through. We had nothing else to do but talk. I'd gotten very, very close to Touka during the first few months of my life outside captivity, and she was my best friend, sister, mother, and everything all rolled into one. However, this trip through the woods of Japan was the time that my social circle expanded to include four more ghouls. Kaneki and I got along because we were both analytical and liked peaceful atmospheres, at least outside of combat, and his new aggressiveness and ruthlessness gave him a new element of relatability that let us truly break the ice between us and become friends in a way that we never could before my second imprisonment. Nishiki and I had similar caustic senses of humor, and we bonded over playfully mocking the rest of our group. He was a great friend and a good person behind his asshole mask that he showed to the world. Ayato had an altruistic and idealist outlook, and yet he understood the reality of life enough to not have any guilt or hesitation in killing whoever he wanted to. The clash between his dreams and reality made of a surprisingly vivid conversationalist that I could talk to for hours with about all kinds of things Ayato also had an interest in the physics of magic, and though I didn't know any more than he did we theorised how transmutation and teleportation were actually possible. My explanation of how my teleportation worked was fascinating to him. Hinami really clicked with Ayato and Kaneki, as Kaneki had the same gentle passion for reading and learning, and Ayato had the same vindictive and vengeful attitude towards enemies. She seemed to be getting over her crush on me, which was nice. She was almost 15 and I'd just turned 13, and though two years may not be a big age difference once we're both adults it was a little weird for me now. Touka and Kaneki were getting along more now that Kaneki wasn't a pacifist. They had work ethics that few could match, and they were both fiercely protective, so once they stopped antagonizing each other they meshed well. I pretty much hung out with Touka, Kaneki, and Ayato, because I had the most in common with them. I was an intellectual from the scientists that I ate, I was vicious and combative from the ghouls that I'd eaten, and I loved literature and learning because I was stuck in a cage for my entire childhood. I had qualities that matched all three of them, and so I had my first circle of friends as we traveled across the Japanese countryside.

I never even suspected that something could go wrong until I saw another massive wall around the city of Tokyo, just like the city we'd just left.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Hey, here's chapter 7!**_

 _ **Sorry that it took so long to get this chapter out, I'm going through my high school graduation so I'm stuck doing a lot of paperwork.**_

 _ **If anybody has any ideas about what the Quinque should be like I'm all ears, they've got a lot of them and I want most of them to be unique instead of just stereotypical mass-produced crap.**_

 _ **And the setting officially changes and the first arc ends!**_


	10. Chapter 8: Call of the Songbird

**Chapter 8: Call of the Songbirds**

"What the fucking hell?" Touka stared at the wall surrounding the city we were planning on disappearing into. There was no way we'd be able to get through the gateways around the cities, even from the distance we were away I could see cars heading through the walls, where they were looked through and scanned before anyone made it through. It was a huge structure, 20 feet high and at least eight full feet of solid concrete thick. It must've cost enough money to send the entire population of the city to the moon. At regular intervals it had guard towers with guns ready to be aimed at… whatever needed aiming at, like wild animals or invading armies or scary ghouls like us.

"I thought that there weren't any ghouls anywhere but Kakurega?" Kaneki puzzled.

"No," I shook my head.

"There are ghouls in other places, they're just not as strong or as numerous," Nishiki clarified.

"The average Rc cell count for ghouls outside of Kakurega is 700," Ayato went further, probably drawing from his time with Kanou.

"So they're on average weaker by at least a level of magnitude, we could all kill them on our own, even Hinami. Any ghoul above B class can," I finished. Hinami's eyes narrowed angrily, and she punched me in the shoulder, momentarily dislocating the joint. Ayato smirked.

"So how do we get in?" Nishiki sighed, eyeing the city's entrances lazily.

"Same way we got out of the last one," I shrugged, and put down my duffle bag. With a long look, a twisting motion, laser focus, and an effort of will, and I teleported away with a sharp crack. Next thing I knew I was above the city, looking down on it from a thousand feet up _(AN: this is about a hundred stories, so it's nowhere near above the clouds or anything)_. I quickly took in the layout of the city. A massive tower stood in the very center of the huge city, which was easily larger than Kakurega, though it had a similar layout. The rest of the city looked flat from my angle, but my ghoulish vision was able to still distinguish between the buildings and the streets and alleys. I chose an abandoned building by the docks, and apparated again, keeping all of my bodyparts for the second time every. It seemed like all the repetition was finally starting to sink in, and maybe I'd be able to use the skill more often sometime in the near future. Getting back on track I reappeared in the alley I'd selected and shattered my organic tissue on the pavement as I hit the ground at 30 miles per hour. A few minutes later I experimented with my magic again, using it to push the blood out of my clothes. After a bit of effort, and a longer while of trying to get the spots I missed, I stopped looking like a mini serial killer. I pulled apart the metal lock on the door of the building, which turned out to be an abandoned apartment complex, and looked it over. All the floors were still structurally sound, the windows were in once piece except for a few on the ground floor, and it still had a bit of old furniture hidden here and there, like a few chairs, a table, a pair of beds, and other odds and ends. It was a shitty place for anyone with a job, but it'd do for a group of desperate ghouls. I teleported back to the others, again keeping my whole body with me. I wondered if the skill was like riding a bike, that once it "clicked" I'd know how to do it right forever. That'd be great, because it sucked having to regenerate every time I wanted to teleport.

"Find anything?" Touka asked, knowing what I'd done without me having to say it.

"I found a good place to crash where we won't be bothered by a landlord. It's a shithole but it's somewhere we won't be hunted. Grab hold," I held out my hand, and Touka took it. A quick series of teleports later, and we were all in the building without any issues.

"Did you get good at that all of a sudden or something?" Nishiki rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers and toes and everything else, surprised not to feel pain.

"Seems like," I shrugged, "Must have accidentally figured it out or something. My magic's feeling kind of strange, anyways." It was. I hadn't noticed until I teleported into the city but my magic felt more… tainted, for lack of a better word. It was like some part of me that was held away from my magic was now bleeding into my magic and reducing it from a state of purity. It wasn't a bad thing at all, my magic now felt like… more like _me_ , if that makes any sense, and so I seemed to have a bit more control over it than I had before, and it seemed stronger, more intense. I didn't have to use as much power to teleport, and with the increased control I could produce a better effect. It really was as if some piece of me had found its rightful place. As a wizard I had a magical core and I had a sixth sense towards magical energy. I could sense its presence, potency, and other things that I didn't really understand due to inexperience. My magical core was like a container. It filled with magic, which then filtered down to me where I put it to use. Now, though, it was like there was a mirror image of my magical core existing in the same place as my magical core, each overlapping the other, changing my magic in a way that my magical core didn't. I was a bit nervous because I had no idea when it happened, and if one of the most important parts of my SOUL ITSELF could suddenly change without my notice, then what else was I vulnerable to?

"This _is_ a shithole," Ayato agreed with me as he looked over the building.

"Eh," I shrugged helplessly, "what were you expecting? Besides, give us a few weeks with magic and this place'll be in perfect condition. I'm sure we can figure out a repairing and cleaning spell between the three of us."

"Speaking of spells are there any incantations that I need to use magic?" Ayato asked. Oh, right, he was new to the whole magic thing.

"We haven't used them, but neither of us are really experts. I do wonder if it would make a difference if we did, though," I told him, thinking it matter over. We were in a hallway between the apartments on the middle-ish floor I'd teleported us to. It was a faded muddy brown that might have been a very different color a long, long time ago. Dusty doorways dotted the walls regularly to the apartments on either side, each marked with a number carved into the doors' wood. The place smelled like a trash dump, but it would keep rain and eyes off of us. "Claim rooms?" Touka guessed.

"Claim rooms," Nishiki agreed, kicking a door open and walking inside. I chuckled at him, starting to see his grumbling behavior as amusing. We all picked an apartment for ourselves, and took our duffel bags with us. I ended up getting a corner one, so I had windows to two sides of the building. I could look sideways over the docks of the city, and inward into the city itself. Even the docks were patrolled by armed men in uniform. We _really_ needed to find out why the capital of Japan was essentially under martial law. Other than the background of a military presence, the city was actually pretty peaceful. People were walking around and doing their business with a confidence that no one had in Kakurega. For both humans and ghouls in that city one wrong decision could end with you getting torn into little pieces, but here, outside of the home of ghouls in the world, there were maybe a few hundred in the city of several million, so people felt so much _safer_ , and if they weren't suspicious than it would only help us stay under the radar. Oh, there was still a feeling of urgency as people went about their business, but it wasn't a fear of death like in the bloody city of Kakurega, merely the normal urgency that normal people treat their lives with.

My apartment had three rooms, a bedroom, a living room, and a room that doubled as a kitchen and a dining room. All three were strictly rectangular in shape, and were in the same time-damaged state as the rest of the building. There wasn't any furniture at all, but I could go a few more nights in a sleeping bag. I was FREE now, Kanou was miles and miles away, as was the unending conflict that kept Kakurega in a constant state of controlled panic. The walls were a grimy brown color, and the carpet was disgusting, the ceiling might have been white years before, and one window had been broken inwards by a thrown brick, with glass shards scattered across the floor of the bedroom. I dropped by duffel bag in the living room, and started unpacking. A sleeping bag came out first, followed by a few sets of clothes, and then the pair of Quinque cases that I was responsible for. I set everything in a corner so it was out of the way, and just paused for a moment to take everything in. We didn't stop for anything on our way away from Kakurega so it was the first time I'd had a chance to really come to terms with the fact that I had escaped from an almost literal hell. I was hit with a sudden desire to go on a walk, so I walked out the door. I pounded my fist on Touka's door, yelling to her that I was going out for a bit to relax, and I heard her answer, so I made my way down the stairs.

I headed straight into the city, just taking in the sights and not really thinking about anything at all. It was so starkly different from anything I'd personally experienced that I was more than a little uncomfortable in such a _peaceful_ place. And I was 13, I was aloud to gasp and stare when I saw new things. I walked along a busy street, observing the people, the buildings, and everything in between. There were simply so many humans out and about that it was hard to move at a steady pace, and they were all unconcerned about getting too close to strangers, so I was pressed in by a wall of living flesh. It smelled delicious, and I was well hidden from anyone that could've been tailing me so I didn't mind the crowds all that much. I did decide that I wanted to eat that night however, as the smell was making me crave a snack. I'd just use my Kakuja to swallow my meal whole, no reason to make a mess that could be recognized. Using a bit of inhuman speed I snatched a man's wallet from his pocket and stashed it away before he could look to see who'd taken it, and by the time he did get his head all the way around to face me I had my hands where he could see them, and I wasn't visibly paying attention to him in the slightest. He patted down his pockets, and the time he spent doing that allowed me to vanish into the crowds. After several minutes, when I was certain that the man wouldn't be able to find me, I pulled his wallet back out of my cargo pants pocket, and pulled the money out of it. It was only a bit more than a thousand yen, but I could do a bit with it. I went browsing through the open shops, looking for a certain product in particular. Then, I saw it, and I bought a cheap used coffee machine. It wouldn't be anything like what we used to make at Anteiku, but I figured that the drink would be welcome all the same. A few people gave me weird looks as I headed back to the apartments. It would be kind of strange to see a kid carrying a coffee machine around, so I didn't blame them.

When I got back I was treated to the sight of Ayato and Kaneki trying to learn cleaning spells. The two of them were in the hallway of the apartments, waving their hands around and occasionally making something glow. Sometimes their hands were the things glowing, sometimes it was the walls, sometimes their eyes, it was kind of like a pair of lava lamps. I noticed that the color of their magic was different too, Kaneki's was a deep crimson red, while Ayato's was a darker color, more like dried blood. Kaneki had managed to get the dirt to move a bit from one place to another, though it looked like he was having a hard time controlling which direction it moved in. Ayato was… disintegrating it? Whatever he was doing he was reducing it to an extremely fine powder that didn't stick to surfaces. They heard me reach the top of the stairs, and they turned to look. Unfortunately, they did so while casting magic, and Ayato's disintegration magic clipped my hair.

I smiled at him, in a sweet, happy grin that promised a long, slow, torturous death.

XXXXXXX

Somewhere nearby, a purple-haired "housewife" sneezed.

XXXXXXX

"Ayato, if you don't pay attention when you're experimenting with spells, I'm going to tear your spleen out your asshole," I informed him innocently, my magic wisping off of me in a dark purple miasma. He nodded frantically. I walked past the idiot duo, placing the coffee machine in Kaneki's hands. I went to my apartment, and sighed. I ran my fingers over my head, cringing at the uneven part. It had started to grow back, and was about half an inch in length all around, but now there was a little part off to the right on top of my head that was only ⅔ of that length. It wouldn't matter once my hair grew all the way back in, but it was obvious as is. I also needed to decide if I was going to keep my old hairstyle or go for a new one. It wasn't really something that was all that urgent right then, so I indulged myself and flopped down on the pile of clothes and the sleeping bag that I had in the corner of my room.

I stared at the roof of my room until the dirty color of it bothered me enough to pull me from my laziness. I reached out with a hand, and channeled a tiny bit of magic to my finger, enough to make the tip of my digit glow with the royal purple of my magic. It wasn't enough to actually cast a spell, and it wouldn't do anything until I told it to, but it was like holding a sword in my hand instead of keeping it sheathed at my waist. I could put it to use easier when I did decide what to do with it. I ran my thoughts over how I wanted my magic to get rid of the fucking filth in my new apartment. I drew upon a bit of science knowledge, and thought about vaporizing everything that wasn't a part of the wall when it was clean. I tightened up my will and focus, keeping my thoughts on nothing but the idea of burning the unclean right out of the ceiling where I was pointing. I pulled another bit of knowledge from Kanou, the Latin word for "to cleanse" or "to purify". Kanou's memories were proving to be one of my most valuable resources again and again, with the sheer amount of knowledge that the sick, twisted man possessed.

" **Purgato,"** I commanded, my magic crossing the distance from my fingertip to the ceiling at a ridiculous speed, and attaching itself to a section of the ceiling with the surgical precision that a network of Rc cells gave me in the form of monstrous magical control. The spell ended after a brief flicker of activity, and I looked. A thumbprint-sized burn mark was on the ceiling, not having cleaned the thing in the least. A vein stood out on my forehead in irritation. My first idea was scrapped, and I moved back to the drawing board. It did a very good job of reducing the target to pure and uniform ash, which might make it a good combat spell, but for its intended purpose the spell was ineffective. Burning it didn't clear away the dirt quickly enough, so the logical next step was to simply send the dirt away. I could spread the physical matter that made up the dirt across the entire atmosphere, making it "vanish" from my presence. It would probably take much more power than just burning it away, so for my second try I pushed a bit more magic into the spell as I concentrated. This time a faint point of light flashed between my finger and the soot spot on the ceiling, with the command **Elaviaro** , from the word for "wash away." A patch of soot a bit smaller that the previous spell made instantly shifted to a flawless bluish grey color that looked like aged, but perfectly clean paint. I grinned victoriously. I cast the spell again. And then again. And again.

… It was going to take a long time to clean the whole place.

XXXXXXX

Well, bad news first. I was up all night trying to get my new cleaning spell to work at the level I wanted it to, so when Touka came knocking on my door to wake me up I was still standing in the middle of my room pointing at the wall and muttering darkly to myself as I glared at the wall with a violent focused stare. Good news, I got it to cover half a square foot of surface with one cast. As I was casting I was realising that I was treating the spell like I did my Raw magical blasts, unleashing it in a wave of the concept of _push_ , though in the case of my Elaviaro it was with the concept of _disperse filth until clean_. It didn't need to be fired like a projectile, it needed to lightly touch the target, and then be allowed to act upon said target. I had to manipulate and project my magic in an entirely different way from the instinctive and crude manner that I'd been using. Progress was slow, as I didn't have any advantages in the subject (being a magical ghoul gave me extreme levels of control, but I still had to learn to use magic in all sorts of ways before that control could really help me. It was like having a really really good control system for a vehicle that made piloting it really easy, but I still had to learn how to pilot it the hard way before the user-friendly control system could benefit me properly) but for my inexperience I was making good headway into a branch of magic that I'd never used before.

"... You want coffee?" Touka asked, a raised eyebrow and a vein on her forehead the only sign that she found my anger for the wall strange.

"... yeah, yeah," I nodded, turning away from my "enemy" with my anger dropping from my face, leaving me with a decidedly neutral expression that leaned towards a smile just enough to be noticed. She yawned, and nodded, heading back out the door with me a few steps behind. My apartment already looked significantly different now that it was returning to a semblance of cleanliness, with half of the living room restored to a state free of grime. The other guys seemed to have gone to work as much as me, and they were shoving the last bits of dirt from the hallway out the window with their "dirt telekinesis" spell. Without the layers of filth covering everything the floor was an even chocolate brown, and the walls were a dark blue that matched well. The ceiling was a pale grey. Each door was painted the same grey as the ceiling, and all of the paint had no discoloration, though it still looked aged. Touka kicked a door open, and walked in.

"Get a cup for Zero, shitty Nishiki!" she yelled.

"Shut the fuck up, shitty Touka!" Nishiki called back from further in the apartment. I guessed that it was either Ayato's or Kaneki's, as it was a lot cleaner than it had to have been when we got here. I didn't pay attention to who was where so I didn't know. Ayato was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall, Hinami doing the same next to him. Kaneki was standing, looking out the window of the room towards the ocean. I went over and punched Kaneki in the back of the knee, his bones creaking dangerously from the blow.

"The fuck was that for?" Kaneki cursed, scowling at me.

"For figuring out a new spell faster than me you shitty genius," I growled at him. I pushed him aside and hopped up on the windowsill, sitting across it so I could lean back against the window's frame.

"You're such a brat," Kaneki shook his head. Hinami giggled.

"So, what now?" Ayato spoke up. It really was the big question. The non-magical of us would need to eat sometime soon, and what was our purpose now? I'd been searching for a reason to be alive back in Kakurega, back in the very beginning, and now that need for purpose had spread to the others. For the most part ghouls' only purpose in life was to survive living in the same city as the CCG. Now that we didn't have to worry about the investigators killing us if we look at humans a little too hungrily in public, and had a relatively large amount of safety, we didn't have anything to do. The only one of us with a real hobby was Touka, and hers was collecting music, something that she chose to leave behind when she left Kakurega with us. And the worst part was, Ayato, Kaneki, and I all were IMMORTAL. Unless we were killed we would never die, and living forever with no reason to be alive would be… excruciating. I threw a short-term plan together to keep us focused and stave off the depression that comes with a lack of purpose.

"For now…" I thought about it, scrambling to come up with something productive that was ambitious enough for us to stay motivated about, falling into a leadership position instinctively, "let's focus on making this place livable. After that, I want to see if we can give the rest of us magic, so Hina-chan, Nishiki, and Touka can't starve. Then… then we should find a way to make money."

"Money?" they all blinked in surprise.

"Well, yeah, I don't know about you but I want to be able to live rich and spend as much as I want," I shrugged, "and none of us are ethical enough to say that having a lot of money will be fucking awesome. And that none of us really care just how we get said money."

"Fucking humans," Ayato agreed with a nod.

"How would we make that much money?" Hinami tilted her head. She was still mostly innocent and unstained with the harsh corruption of reality, so she didn't understand the last thing I'd said. Touka and Nishiki came out of the back of the apartment, and Nishiki shoved a filled coffee mug into my hands, and I took the cup without losing my balance on the windowsill. I gave him a nod in thanks (which he ignored) and took a sip. It was terrible, but I'd been spoiled by Anteiku, so it might've been good coffee to normal folk.

"Well, to really get rich you have to be wealthy enough to get started," I smiled, finally able to but the centuries of memories I had filed away in my mind to a practical use, "so I guess we could go bank robbing or something, with magic we could get away with crime easily. Once we had enough money though…" I took another sip, looking out towards the ocean. "We have more options. Investing, flipping stocks and collectors items, maybe even starting a legitimate business or something. We'd probably make the best Yakuza group that ever existed if we tried, and the _really_ big organised crime groups do make a fuckton of money from their front businesses on top of their crimes."

"You want us to become Yakuza?" Kaneki gaped.

"Why not though?" Nishiki shrugged, "it's not like humans are doing all that well with what they've got, so we might as well take what we want. And if the magical freak show here," he waved to me, Kaneki, and Ayato, "can make sure that our minions are loyal, then we could be the richest people on the planet in a few years, depending on how much we do steal."

"Freak show?" Ayato growled through his teeth, raising at eyebrow.

"He, Carneval," I laughed, "it's perfect."

"What?" Touka blinked.

"Carneval, that's what we'll call it," I explained, holding my arms out majestically, "we're a bunch of freaks and monsters, so our criminal empire will be our Carnival of Horrors! And spell it C-A-R-N-E-V-A-L, cause Carne means meat. Or flesh, if you want to be specific."

"That's fucking lame," Nishiki groaned, slapping his forehead.

"I like it," Hina-chan beamed innocently.

"Then it's decided," I nodded, as if she was the only opinion that mattered. I suppressed a chuckle at the look on Nishiki's face. "First step is to figure out what in the name of fucking hell is going on in this city, then we can find places with lots of goodies to… 'borrow.'"

"Yeah, it is kind of strange," Kaneki nodded, "Tokyo shouldn't have a reason to be walled like this, and there's no sign of an invasion or anything, so why would it be cut off from the world like this?"

"Maybe there's more ghouls here than we thought?" Touka offered.

"No," Kaneki, Ayato, and I all shook our heads and said at the same time. "We've eaten a lot of CCG and all of them knew that Tokyo doesn't have enough ghouls for a containment wall to be made," Ayato finished. "And we got a few high rank doves on our way out, so we'd know."

"It's got to be that tower in the center of downtown," I suddenly spoke up, going over my memories of seeing the city from above. "All of the soldiers in uniform that were on patrol in the city originated from there. It's got its own set of personal guards, something that no other building does. Whatever is in that tower is what's responsible for at least the military guys, if not the wall too."

"Then we're crashing another really famous tower in the middle of a city?" Touka and Ayato grinned, both siblings showing a bit of their somewhat unhealthy love for breaking things.

"Can we do it in a way that doesn't bring the CCG back down on our heads?" Kaneki asked rhetorically.

"Yeah, whatever," I shrugged. I tossed (read: threw _really_ hard) the coffee mug back at Nishiki, who let it shatter against his face. "I was up all night, so I'm gonna go take a nap. Let's meet back up here tonight and see what we can figure out in a day." They all nodded at this, agreeing that it was a good plan. I hopped down from my perch, and after giving Touka a quick hug on a whim, headed back to my apartment. I was still adjusting from being ripped away from her for so long, so I was stealing hugs and things like that any time I could. I kicked my sleeping back out away from the wall so I had space to lay down on it, and did so, making a mental note to get real mattresses at the first opportunity. I closed my eyes, and let myself start to relax.

XXXXXXX

 _Blood. Blood covered me. Blood covered_ _ **her**_ _. Blood dripped from us like sweat. Blood pooled underneath us. Blood stretched out endlessly in an ocean of crimson red. Blood fell from the sky in fat drops, splattering us in a warm, sticky spray. Blood formed the shapes of faces screaming in fear and screaming for mercy all around us on the blood's surface, on the bloody raindrops, and the ocean beneath us. It was peaceful, in a savage, twisted way. The only noise was the wet sound of blood raining on the two of us. The person in front of me was female, and tall, much taller than me. She had long hair, an overcoat, and a sword at her hip, but because she was completely covered in blood that was all I could discern._

" _How," she gasped, "how? I'm already winged!" She looked me in the eye with dark, abyss-black eyes. "HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?"_

XXXXXXX

I flung myself off of my sleeping back, my Rinkaku sprouting from my back soundlessly to spear into the walls and ceiling and give me the leverage to fight the threat that had woken me up. I looked around, panting heavily, There was nothing out of the ordinary in my apartment. Deep within my soul a nexus of power pulsed again, sending me an urge to act, just like it did the night that I became a Kakuja. It didn't send me visions this time, but I had an extremely strong urge to go for a walk in a certain direction from the apartment complex.

"What the fuck?" I gasped, my breathing still rough. The one thing I knew though, is that when I trusted the strange guiding force before, it did me a lot of good. Cautiously, I decided to go along with the compulsion. I left the apartments again, yelling to whoever was still there that I was going out, not even checking the apartments for occupants as I did so. I walked at a fast pace, almost desperately, following the feeling that was instructing me. I was moving as fast as I could while still walking, so I passed everybody on the sidewalks. Within half an hour I was in the center of Tokyo, with the huge tower looming over me from several blocks over. The compulsion was leading me straight towards the tower, but now that I was closer, whatever it was leading me towards seemed to be… moving. It was heading down the tower slowly, so I decided to head to the doors, and wait for my target to come to me. I stood off to the side of the glass doorways that led into the lobby, and leaned against the wall, ignoring the guards that were eyeing me suspiciously for doing so. They weren't moving to tell me to leave, so they weren't important. Several minutes later, I felt the target of my strange mental compulsion reach the bottom floor, and then walked through the front door. Then, I saw her with my real eyes.

She was six feet tall, easily, with steel grey hair. She had an athletic body type, but still held a feminine shape. She wore a black uniform with a short skirt and high stockings that showed off her thighs. Over her uniform was a grey cloak with a black symbol on each shoulder of a black bird over several magatama. On her left hip was a sheathed nodachi. She was pale, extremely so, and she walked with the uncanny grace of the pinnacle of warriors, and even I, someone who had killed hundreds myself, felt her muted bloodlust just underneath a thin mask of laziness. Her cheeks had a red blush to them, and she was breathing heavily. The moment she walked out of the doors her eyes snapped to mine. It was like something snapped into place the moment our gazes met. Her eyes were strong, unyielding, prideful, and held a maddening thirst for violence in them. My eyes were solid, confident, and desperately wanted to know what it would be like to fight her. An identical pair of psychotic grins grew on both our faces.

"Who are you?" she asked, smiling pleasantly but keeping the interested bloodlust in her gaze pinned right on my own eager eyes.

"Zero," I told her, "only name they gave me."

"Hmm, I'm Karasuba," she gave me a once over, still with her sadistically gleeful grin, "you're a bit too… experienced… for someone your age, aren't you? I can smell the blood on you."

"Really," I asked, actually concerned. I sniffed my hands, catching a faint whiff of blood from the doves back in Kakurega during our great escape. We hadn't had time nor the means to take a shower since, but the smell was still too faint for a human to detect.

"You are interesting," she told me cheerfully, placing her right hand on the hilt of her nodachi.

"How so?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow.

"I have no fucking clue," she told me conversationally.

And then she put the tip of her sword through the spot between my eyebrows.

Now, ghouls can't be harmed by guns, and other normal weapons, which is why the CCG invented the Quinque. However, ghouls can still be harmed by a sufficient show of force, which is how Rize died when she tried to eat Kaneki. She was crushed under the sheer weight of the metal that fell on her, and similarly other mundane objects can harm ghouls if they just have enough power behind the blow. Karasuba's sword hit me at a speed that was nearing Mach one, and with the force of a cement truck behind it.

My head exploded like a watermelon shot with a 12-gauge shotgun. She frowned, disappointed, and was about to unsheathe her blade (her stab was so fast that not a single drop of blood got on it) when she realized that my body hadn't stumbled, or fallen to the ground, or acknowledged the loss of its head in any way. Then, in a matter of a pair of seconds, my head reformed from a latticework of spidery Rc cell constructs.

"That was irritating," I smirked at her, enjoying the look of shock on her face. The shock was quickly replaced by interest. On the inside, though, I was panicking. _I hadn't seen her move at all_. I was a SSS class ghouls and I WASN'T FAST ENOUGH TO EVEN SEE HER MOVE. I was really wishing that I'd brought one of the Quinque right about then. I threw a punch, catching her in the stomach. She saw it coming, and let me hit her. I heard a bit of her breath leave her lungs, and she took a step backwards, but otherwise she didn't show any reaction.

"What are you," she looked over me again, trying to figure out what was different about me. I had an idea and _flooded_ my body with magical power, hoping to increase my physical abilities even a little bit so I wouldn't be completely overpowered by the _monster_ in front of me. I would've normally used my Kagune to fight something like her, but I was surrounded by people on every side, and though I'd just _regrown my head_ I might not be identified as a ghoul unless people saw my Kagune. The crowds were pretty much ignoring the two of us, anyways, so I assumed Karasuba killing people was a… common occurrence. She whipped her blade forward again, and I was cut in half horizontally. I fell to the ground with my arms cut off below the elbow and my body cut in half across my abdomen. Behind me, the wall of the building was cut through by a blade of wind pressure just _left over_ after her blade had passed through my flesh. Thin strands of blood-like Rc cells spilled from all of my pieces and latched together, pulling my body back together and sealing the wounds in a few moments.

"Not human," I gasped, looking her in the eye, "what are you?" She smirked.

"... number 04, Karasuba, the Black Seikirei," she informed me. And then her blade cleaved me in twain again, releasing a wave of _raw magic_ through the attack that destroyed the building behind me..

XXXXXXX

 **Hey, I'm back! Chapter 8 has arrived!**

 **I'd just like to thank all the people out there that favorited and followed my story, you guys are a big help and a big encouragement.**

 **Double thanks to the people that threw out ideas for Quinque, I think I know where I'm going to use them.**

 **And can I just say that it's really tricky making conversations between a group of six people, and trying to keep their personalities different. I'll write one of Zero's lines, and then switch over to... Ayato, for example, and he talks a bit differently from Zero. At least he's supposed to, but I'm still a newbie as an author, so... yeah.**

 **As always I eagerly hope for feedback, and I'll see you guys again next week!**


	11. Chapter 9: The Crow

**Chapter 9** : **The Crow**

"That's not as painful the second and third time," I informed her as my upper body knit itself back together vertically. A red line trailed down between my eyes and down my neck to my abdomen, but my Rc cells barely allowed me to bleed before my regeneration kicked in. She frowned.

"That's not as satisfying the second and third time," she countered, pouting.

"What, not satisfied killing me three times in a row?" I asked sarcastically, raising an eyebrow, "though it'd be nice if you'd stop." In response, she cut my head off cleanly halfway up my neck. My head plopped to the ground, and then took a few seconds to be pulled back up to my neck and reattached.

"That really is disappointing," she almost whined, "you don't even scream."

"Sorry for having pain tolerance," I chuckled darkly, hoping that she'd stop. I might be able to regenerate as many times as I needed to in physical terms, but it did strain my magical reserves, and I could regenerate from the most grievous fatal wounds (like the ones she was giving me) only a dozen times or so. If she decided to kill me one too many times…

"Hmm, yes," she smiled, "you do seem much better than the other shitty humans. Are you even human?" She looked me over, trying to see if she could find something that marked by as non-human. She wouldn't find one unless I let her.

"Can you keep a secret?" I tilted my head. I felt something… strange, and calming settle into my magic, like a spell, but one used to keep me calm. Internally my paranoia sharpened, and I started channeling my magic through my deep tissue to try and clear the mind magic from my mind in a way that didn't make my glow like a firefly.

"I like to believe I can," she said playfully, her breathing getting a bit more heavy, and her flush spreading from the two faint spots on her cheekbones.

"Hmm," I nodded, feeling the mind magic eat away at my self-control and projecting the concept of _peace, trust_ onto me. "You heard of ghouls?" I asked her quietly, the last tiny pieces of my self-preservation at least keeping me quiet as I said it.

"Oh?" Her eyes widened in comprehension, "You're a strong one then, to heal like that so young." She suddenly seemed closer, and I realised that she'd taken a step towards me.

"Kakuja," I mumbled, and she licked her lips, eyes widening. My vision swam, and I felt like I'd taken the biggest hit from the biggest blunt in existence, and everything was weightless and I didn't have the awareness to see anything past her face, much less move or even think. Then her lips met mine.

Magic exploded from my core, flooding my mind and channeling to her, banishing the mind magic from me in the process. I felt her magic flow back in equal amounts, nestling into a part of me and forming a link to… to _her_ magical core I realised as I began to feel her magical core across the link that was just established. I could suddenly feel her emotions across the link, as well as her surface thoughts. My awareness came back along with my clarity of thought, and I saw four demonic fairy wings spread out behind her in a vibrant display of magic. Both of our magical cores resonated, and I felt my magical capacity skyrocket to match hers. It expanded to at least ten times the size it used to be, and the strain of artificially doing so caused my magical core to _ache_ in a way that I didn't have any pain tolerance for. I pushed her away reflexively, screaming as my body was overloaded with power. I glowed like a fucking jack-o-lantern, visible beams of power streaming from my active Kakugan and mouth as my Rc cells helplessly tried to heal whatever was causing me pain. I was feeling pain directly from my _soul_ , though, so my regeneration couldn't do a thing. It only took me a few seconds to come back to myself, but those few seconds were like a little taste of a literal hell, and that's coming from someone that regularly takes multiple fatal wounds and considers it an annoyance.

"WHAT THE FUCKING HELL?" I gasped, my active Kakugan glaring at her. Surprisingly, the humans weren't in a panic, they were just hurrying away so that they weren't caught between whatever was going on between us.

"I am Seikirei 04, Karasuba," she repeated breathlessly, an… innocent… smile on her face, "and you are my… Ashikabi?" As she finished she got more and more confused, and across her link I… I didn't _see_ her thoughts, but… _knew_ them as they happened. Her mind flickered across images of a man that she barely knew that apparently was _supposed to be_ her Ashikabi. And when she thought of the word "Ashikabi" the concept that it described carried across the link as well.

"So I'm your soul mate or something?" I asked, wanting to confirm what I was "seeing" through the link, for lack of a better description, before I trusted the visions.

"I already have an Ashikabi," she shook her head, "his name is-"

"Natsuo, right?" I raised an eyebrow, "I mean yeah, you've got the remains of a link to someone else, but if there was one it failed a long time ago. There would've been no trace of your bond within a few weeks."

"What?" she breathed, eyes wide.

"Well yeah, you didn't actually kiss him to form the bond, and neither of you really wanted the bond either, and it seems to be a bond based on compatibility of the soul, so… yeah, if your bond ever actually existed it withered and died pretty quickly," I told her, standing up from my knees, though I didn't remember falling to them. "Can't you feel the link between us?" I asked, tilting my head sideways. I poked around her end of our bond, "feeling" what her magical core was like. I realized that it was fundamentally different from mine. It was still a part of her soul, like my magical core was, but her core was _physical_ on a fundamental level in a way that mine wasn't. It was like comparing a hammer to a knife. Both are handheld tools with similar shapes and forms, but they are based on entirely different concepts.

"No," she narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. "Shouldn't your phone be ringing right now?" she asked me out of nowhere.

"What?" I blinked, "I don't have one, why?" She gave me a strange look. I saw the face of a man with glasses and white hair flicker across her mind, and I got all the information that would've come from the phone call from the owner of MBI, along with a few more useful tidbits.

"You don't have a phone?" she asked.

"I'm a kid. A ghoul kid," I deadpanned. She shrugged. "So what now? Do I have any ' _obligations'_ or rules that I need to obey?" my tone dropped threateningly at the end. She may be physically superior to me in every way but with our link the tables had completely turned. If I knew what she was about to do before she did it I could still fight. I hoped. She gave me a satisfied smile when she heard the threat in my tone, seemingly happy that she had a killer as her "soul mate."

"No, and if any of them tried to force you into anything they'd die," informed me happily. I could literally _feel_ the loyalty and adoration flow across our link. This was dangerous. Very dangerous. But at the same time I now had the complete loyalty of someone that even I couldn't beat without my Kagune, and probably not my Kakuja either. Whatever bond we had specifically placed me as the master, and she was emotionally shackled to me in a way that utterly enslaved her to me. Even as we spoke I could feel her mind being shifted to give me nothing but absolute obedience. It was so blatantly artificial that for a moment I compared her to ghouls. Then I remembered the way she'd splattered by guts around the street and I retracted my comparison.

"Alright, this is too much, waaaayy too soon, so fuck this, I'm going home where things make sense," I shook my head, and turned to head back to our apartment. Karasuba fell into step behind me wordlessly. I felt her curiosity through our link, but I wasn't in the mood for giving someone my life story. Then I saw images of spy cameras and satellite cameras flicker across her thoughts, and I stiffened.

"What?" she blinked.

"Give me your hand, and breathe out," I told her. She raised an eyebrow, but complied, her curiosity driving her to obey me more than anything else at that moment. The instant I felt her hand touch mine I apparated us, vanishing from the street with a crack, with no human witnesses as they'd all fled a long time before.

XXXXXX

"FUCK!" a redhead screamed as all of her computer's monitors flashed with alarms and alerts, "MIYA GET UP HERE NOW!"

XXXXXXX

Kara and I popped back into conventional reality in my apartment. It looked like the others decided to clean while I was gone, because the place only had as much dirt as a normal apartment, leaning to the clean side. I must've been out longer than I thought if they had time to do all of this.

"This is a shithole," Kara glared at me, "and you're an asshole, what the fuck was that?"

"Magical teleportation," I told her, "and I only got the place a day ago, cut me some slack." I threw myself down on my sleeping bag, not wanting to deal with any more crap. I'd just gotten a new bloodthirsty juggernaut of a minion, and found out that fucking ALIENS existed. One top of just having arrived at the city. My tolerance for weird shit was high, but this was the eleventh or twelfth thing that had happened in a row, and it was getting frustrating. As I thought about it I asked myself when my life was ever anything like normal, but I shoved the idea into a deep, dark hole in my mind, and buried it so it wouldn't bother me with its logic.

Then I heard the door open, and I knew it wasn't Kara.

"Hello," I heard Touka greet Kara guardedly. I felt the two of them tense, assessing each other. Kara immediately smelled the blood on Touka from her last meal, but she didn't give the blue-haired ghoul much credit. Admittedly, Kara could probably tear Touka to pieces with impunity and not even break a nail, but I still wanted to defend Touka in Kara's eyes.

"Touka, this is Kara, she knows why the city's gone FUBAR," I gestured to Kara with my eyes still closed. "Kara, this is Touka, she's… she extremely important to me." I tried to explain the level of commitment and debt I felt for Touka with words, but it didn't really work.

"Hmm," Kara eyed me for a while contemplatively. I felt her consider her opinion of having people that I was emotionally attached to, but she had the patience to find out the whole story before killing anyone that looked her in the eye.

"Touka, is he back?" I heard Kaneki call from down the hall.

"Yeah, get everybody in here!" I called back before Touka could respond. I opened my eyes, and pushed my irritation and stress into the back of my mind. We were ghouls, and dealing with stress was a part of being alive more than it was as a human. I had priorities, and letting myself be lazy wasn't high on the list. A few minutes later, everyone was in the room, all of the ghouls eyeing Kara cautiously.

"Shinichi, who is this?" Hinami was the first to speak up.

"This is Karasuba," I told them, standing next to the gray-haired swordswoman. "She's a Seikirei, an extraterrestrial species that sent a ship full of embryos to earth a long, long time ago. Her physical abilities make _me_ look human, though I haven't tried my Kagune against her yet." I looked her in the eye, and felt her cheer up significantly at the thought of a tougher fight with her "destined one." "The important thing is that they are a magical species, and they bond with an 'Ashikabi', in Kara's case me, with whom they share an extremely strong symbiotic magical empathic bond that can't be broken if done correctly. MBI owns all of them, basically, and as an Ashikabi I'm entitled to a bunch of free shit and a credit card with no limit. I don't actually have the card but Kara here apparently has a reputation for taking whatever she wants so I don't think we'll have any trouble."

"Hold up," Touka held up a hand, "she's an alien?" I nodded in confirmation.

"She's magical?" Kaneki eyed her in a new light. I felt a spike of protectiveness flash through me instinctively, and I quickly made a note to look over my bond to Kara better because that wasn't something I'd normally do for someone after knowing her for such a short amount of time.

"Magic?" Kara repeated skeptically.

"You really thought that launching blades of wind pressure from your sword just by swinging it was a natural phenomenon?" I countered.

"... touche," she admitted.

"Anyways," I cut off the remaining questions, "this is a huge windfall for us for three big reasons." I held up three fingers. "One, we have a new tank to send after things we want really, really dead," I lowered one finger, "two, have a source of reliable information about things around town, because Kara here is pretty high up in MBI. And last but most imporantly," I curled the second finger and pointed the last at the barren room around us, "we can go get real beds and clothes whenever we want."

"This _is_ a shithole," Kara nodded.

"Shut up," I growled, making Kara snicker.

"So can she use magic like us?" Ayato wondered, putting his trust in me and letting the matter about her species slide. I noticed, and appreciated it, Ayato didn't trust easily.

"No, not that I know of," I shook my head, "her magical core is different from ours, and she doesn't have a magical focus to channel her magic through. I don't have any idea how she can do what she can with magic as it is."

"Magical focus?" Ayato questioned.

"Oh, right, I never told you," I slapped my forehead, "your Rc cells are your focus, so don't worry about it too much but normal magical people need a focus to cast magic, like a wand or staff or something."

"Huh," he processed the information thoughtfully.

"So you're all ghouls?" Kara spoke up, "and you can all use… magic?"

"Just me, Ayato, and Zero," Kaneki pointed us out, "I'm Kaneki, the others are Nishiki, Hinami, and Touka."

"Speaking of which," I made an impulsive decision. My Rinkaku shot from my back and cut off three fingers from my left hand. "Eat up, you guys should have magic too, I won't let you have the weakness of starvation if I can help it." The non-magical ghouls cringed, but did as told, chewing and swallowing my fingers. Ayato looked guilty and uncomfortable. Hinami looked uncomfortable too, but that was just because she was embarrassed to be eating in the sight of others. Karasuba was looking at my Kagune with open interest and an twisted _hungry_ look that showed her bloodlust to the world. I'd fight her again later.

"Holy shit you taste amazing," Touka gasped after she swallowed. Kara burst into snickers behind me. I shot her a glare.

"Yeah, that's cause I'm a magical," I explained, "you guys should start developing your magical core over the next few days. I think."

"Think?" Nishiki asked threateningly. Kara "subtly" placed her hand on the hilt of her nodachi.

"I haven't given anyone magic on purpose yet," I shrugged. "So, Kara-chan, where's the best place for furniture?"

XXXXXXX

Karasuba fit into our group shockingly easily. It wasn't hard for us to find common ground, we were all experienced killers with a love of violence, gore, and combat. Except for Kaneki, he was pretty much apathetic to violence unless he was protecting someone. She and Ayato had long conversations about all the interesting ways the pair had killed humans. I heard something about strangling people with their own intestines and I got bored of listening. She and Touka clashed, but that was because they were both extremely aggressive and stepped on each others' metaphorical toes all the time. The first thing I did after we'd finished speaking with each other was to go shopping.

"First things first," I looked at Karasuba, "MBI may have raised you, but I refuse to have anyone related to me be a servant. We're getting you out of that uniform." She resisted at first, pointing out the practicality of her outfit, but I insisted and asked her why she thought I'd be dressing her up in ball gowns and other restrictive things. She shrugged, and attributed it to an "overactive imagination." She also was compelled subconsciously by the bond between us to obey, for the first time the bond directly influenced her thoughts. Instead of skewering me for trying to tell her what to do, she cringed, and tried to argue and shout her way out of it. Eventually she caved, when the bond's influence had escalated to high for her to resist. It was frightening, how much control I had over her, and after seeing what she was capable of against me, I was nothing but glad to have control like I did. She led me to a classy clothes store, and I told her to find something she liked. She immediately went for the more traditional Japanese clothes, and scoured over them. It took her several minutes, but eventually she found a black battle kimono with matching stockings.

"... That's almost exactly what you're wearing now," I pointed out. She smirked, shrugging. I sighed. She also found boots with just a little bit of heel to go with her black kimono and stockings. A grey obi held her kimono together with a purple dragon design wrapping around it. I raised an eyebrow, and she told me the color was similar to my magic. All in all she looked more like an athletic swordswoman with grey hair now then an enforcer for a tyrannical regime. Which was the intention anyway. She got eight copies of the same outfit, and instead of paying just glared at the cashier until the employee just asked us to take the clothes and leave. I chuckled at the blatant use of a threat of violence to get what she wanted.

"How are you planning on taking the furniture back to the apartments?" she asked me, and I stopped in my tracks.

"... I didn't even think of that," I sighed.

"I could go get a few grunts from MBI," she offered.

"Nah, I have an idea," I shook my head, not wanting the minions of a madman anywhere near where I lived. Especially after I stole his favorite dog. It would definitely be the most complicated spell that I'd ever thought up, but if it worked then I'd instantly have a new ability that would lift me up to a new level of power in an uncountable number of ways. That said, I was going to copy something off of an anime.

Karasuba led me to a shop in a market center of one of the wards, and we walked into a furniture store. Now as much as I was internally panicking about suddenly having a stranger directly linked to nothing less than my _soul_ , if she kept scaring people like she did the shop's employees and customers just by being present, then we'd probably get along fine. The humans literally almost ran out of the store, leaving only a single employee behind to cater to us, who was visibly losing color as we watched him. The humans thought they were being inconspicuous as they ran away, but their fast jog-walking thing that they did was obvious from my point of view.

"I'd like to look at your bedroom furniture sets," I informed the employee as he shook in his boots in utter terror. He suddenly froze, looked to me, to Kara, to me, to Kara, and then his eyes went so wide his eyeballs were about to fall out of his face. Then, he fell over in a dead faint.

"Pervert," Kara snickered. I blushed. I was thirteen, and Kara _was_ attractive, as much as she terrified me. I really hoped that I wasn't becoming a masochist, I wanted to keep my dignity. She walked past him confidently, heading towards our destination without his help. I followed.

The store had a decent variety of options, from twin beds, to king sized beds, and all sorts of different sheets and blankets and pillows and things. However, that didn't matter to me, or to the others. We just wanted something soft to sleep on. So, that said, I picked up a pillow and tried to cast the spell that I was trying to invent.

" **Latenslocum"** I intoned, focusing on the pillow. I tried to wrap my magic around it, and designate the space that it occupied as _separate_ from everything else. If I could remove the pillow from normal reality, and call it back, then I would have infinite storage space for whatever I wanted. It worked as intended, my magic encasing the pillow in a two dimensional barrier that cut it off from everything else, and then without any light show, noise, or fanfare, it vanished.

"Ha!" I did a fist pump.

"Huh, where did it go?" Karasuba looked over my hands curiously. I froze.

"Oh," I slumped.

"You have no idea, do you?" the swordswoman snickered at me.

"Oh, shut up," I said half-heartedly. The spell had done exactly what I wanted it to. The pillow was now completely removed from normal reality - including me. I couldn't call it back if I couldn't interact with it, could I? So there was a pocket dimension somewhere with nothing but a pillow inside it. I should feel proud, I created an entire dimension at 13, but considering the circumstances my frustration was well deserved.

"You were trying to copy hammerspace, weren't you?" she guessed. At my expression, she laughed. "Why don't you just make them smaller and shove them in a pocket?" I looked her in the eye. Then, I started slapping myself in the forehead repeatedly.

"Stupid… stupid… stupid…" I stopped, leaving a red mark that vanished in the blink of an eye, "yeah, I'll try that." I pointed at another pillow. " **Parvusio,"** and the pillow instantly was a tenth of its original size. It was relatively easy to make my magic do what I wanted, if I actually was specific about what I wanted it to do. It was a lot like programming a computer, actually, it did exactly what you told it to do and if your instructions were flawed then the result would be flawed as well. In a vague sense, my magic was a well of my willpower that could be focused on the world, so really the only thing that mattered in spell casting was my intent. Saying the incantation just occupied my thoughts with what I wanted the spell to do, making it easier to tell my magic what to do without mistakes. Magic was fun to learn to use, I can tell you that. Plus, I'd just gained access to an obscene amount of magic, after my magical core had been forcefully expanded to match Kara's, so I could throw around spells as much as I liked.

"Hmm," Kara went over and picked it up, "I can't tell if it's any lighter."

"Not that it would matter to us," I grumbled, my anger at screwing up my hammerspace imitation only mostly nullified by my success at its replacement.

"No, not really," she agreed. I looked to the displays of fully made beds with sheets, pillows, blankets, and everything. A quick application of a handful of **Parvusio** spells and I had mini beds that were small enough to fit in a backpack all together. I took a sheet and wrapped it around the beds.

"I'll be right back," I told Kara, and teleported the furniture to my apartment before popping back.

"So that's what it looks like from the outside," she commented, musing at the phenomenon that was my magical teleportation.

"Hn," I acknowledged her speaking, but didn't muster the effort to actually speak back myself. I grabbed several more sheets, shrinking them so that they'd fit in my pockets. I'd use them for the rest of the crap we were going to… well we weren't buying them, but I mean all of our new stuff that we'd have after I raided the furniture stores with impunity. It didn't take long to shrink a bunch of tables, chairs, desks, and other random items and throw them inside a sheet. Reversing a **Parvusio** spell only took a quick application of willpower, because I just had to unravel the magic holding them in their smaller form, not cast any kind of counter-spell. All of our new things were delivered to my apartment by way of teleportation. When we were finished, I decided to walk back so I'd have a bit of time to talk to my newest companion without the others being there. It wasn't that I didn't trust the other ghouls or wanted to keep anything a secret… alright that was a lie, Kara and I were fucking _soul bonded_ and her race considered me her husband. That wasn't something that I could just let the others know about casually.

"So, Kara," I looked to her. I felt her amusement flash across her mind, as she heard my nickname. She got a kick out of hearing me call her that, and with the way that it made her happy, I guessed that no one had ever been close enough friends with her to ever give her a real nickname. "I get the whole thing with the Seikirei Plan, but what does it really mean to be an Ashikabi?" She took a minute to respond.

"I… have no fucking clue what you're asking," she informed me. I sighed.

"Okay, so… I'm your husband type thing, right?" I wanted to confirm.

"Yeah," she shrugged, "I know that you're just a kid, but you'll get older. Supposedly Seikirei can live for something like 3 times as long as humans and ghouls, so in a few decades you'll look like the cradle robber."

"I'm immortal," I deadpanned, and she chuckled, until she realized that I was being serious.

"You're immortal?" she looked honestly afraid, something that I didn't actually think she was capable of feeling given the first day that I'd had with her.

"Well, I can still be killed, but I won't age past a certain point," I clarified. Her hand tightened around the hilt of her sword.

"Dammit, you shouldn't have said that in public," she cursed, looking around for something. "MBI has cameras and microphones everywhere, and if Minaka hears about you he's gonna stick you in a lab." She grimaced, and made eye contact again, all emotion dropping from her face, and a familiar oppressive _emptiness_ filling her mind. "You have no idea the kind of tortures that can happen in a place like that." I saw flashes of her childhood, a smaller and younger version of herself undergoing testing and mental conditioning to groom her into the perfect soldier of MBI. She would still be psychologically shackled to the company if she hadn't bonded to me, and her loyalties to them shattered and replaced by loyalty to me. A slow, menacing smile made its gradual way onto my face. All of a sudden I threw my head back and _laughed_. When I finished I looked her in the eye and gave her an amused grin.

"My first memory was in a lab, the lab of a man that wanted to find out why I just wouldn't die. He is the man responsible for turning me into a ghoul. He is the man that made me a _monster_ , and though I'm more than happy being a ghoul, I understand what you're talking about all too well," I told her, and then I turned and walked away. I felt her shock across our bond, before she hurried to keep up with me. Once she'd processed the new information, she started feeling something else. She started feeling hope that she would be bonded to someone that could understand her, could empathize with her. She felt hope that she wouldn't be alone. It was when I realized that fact that, as if a lightbulb went on in my head, I realized that I was to Karasuba what Touka had been to me. I was the first person to ever seem like I cared, even if it was nothing more than a nickname. I didn't know how to handle it, so I acted like I didn't know. We walked the next few minutes in silence. I stopped when we passed in front of a certain kind of store.

"... I have no idea if the power is on in our apartments, and I don't care," I said to myself, and a few minutes later the collection of new things in my apartment had several televisions, computers, and smartphones added to it.

"Kara," I spoke up as we walked out of the store, the same uncomfortable silence between us.

"Yes?" she responded, no trace of her emotional turmoil. Her lazy tone was the same as ever.

"Will you teach me how to fight?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?" she tilted her head, "I can't teach you to use your Kagune, if that's what you're asking, and if you're a Kakuja like you said, aren't you supposed to already be good at fighting?"

"I can use my Kagune just fine," I shook my head, "and my Kakuja is too… conspicuous. If I used it the CCG would mob whatever city I was in. I sort of… tore through most of their HQ on my way out of Kakurega so they really, _really_ don't like me." She laughed.

"You attacked the CCG headquarters head-on?" she sounded impressed.

"They're just a bunch of humans, and I'm an immortal ghoul with magic," I preened, "once I was in my Kakuja there was nothing they could do."

"You're still not explaining why you need my help," she cut my pride short.

"Because outside of my Kakuja form I'm a fucking bitch," I summed it up, "I'm a chimaera ghoul, so I can pretty much outclass most other ghouls in a contest of Quinque, but that's really just cheating to win. I'm a fucking immortal ghoul with magic, I should be able to slaughter _legions_ of normal ghouls with or without my Kagune. Problem is…" I trailed off, and kept my gaze on the sidewalk ahead of us, "I just got out of the lab I grew up in about a year ago, and I'd never even stood on my own two feet before then. The fact that I can even walk is a miracle. My strategy in combat outside of my Kakuja form has pretty much been to rely on my regeneration to outlast my opponent's desire to kill me, and then maybe surprise them with my second Kagune. And the second thing is that on our way out of Kakurega we stole a bunch of Quinque from the CCG and I have no idea how to use any kind of sword or knife or anything so all of us need a teacher."

"You have Quinque?" she blurted, and I could feel the greedy childish excitement that dominated her mind. She was like a kid on christmas morning.

"You want one?" I raised an eyebrow. I'd already been planning on giving her one, but…

"Of course," she scoffed, "Quinque are the sharpest blades in existence, nothing artificially made can match them. Plus they're all unique, and as much as I love my nodachi, any swordsman worth her salt wants a unique blade to call her own."

"Hmm, I haven't actually looked through them all yet, so you could probably take your pick once we do that," I told her. The thought occurred to me that I was giving a psychopath an even better way to kill people, but it wasn't like the situation would be any different with the thing in the hands of us ghouls.

"... Alright, you've got a deal," she nodded. I knew that if I told her directly to instruct us she'd eventually obey, but it was a lot easier to just manipulate her into wanting to do it herself than it would be to fight her pride into obeying. She would've gotten a Quinque anyways, but by letting her think that it was a reward she'd give her best in teaching us. Manipulative, I know, but I didn't give a fuck about that. "Where am I going to teach you?" she asked, making me pause.

"We could knock out a few of the walls of the apartments on the floors we aren't using," I decided after a moment, "as long as you aren't doing your whole 'blade of wind that cuts everything in half' thing we should be find to train there. If we use the basement we could train throws and things like that without breaking holes in the floor." She nodded happily, imagining the scenes of violence with anticipation.

XXXXXXX

 **Chapter… 9!**

 **Wow, so many reviews just from chapter 8, I was like a little girl I was so excited. Thanks all of you.**

 **Just to be clear the bond between an Ashikabi and his or her Seikirei is a Master-Servant type of bond, with the Seikirei as the servant. Karasuba is in the servant role of the bond, so her mind was shifted to be perfectly loyal to her Ashikabi. Most Ashikabi's won't have this happen to their Seikirei for reasons that will be explained in upcoming chapters, but under certain conditions the bond unofficially enslaves the Seikirei to their Ashikabi. Kara is completely subservient to Zero, and so may act OOC at times because of that. However, I am still open for tips on writing her dialogue, so if you've got any let em at me.**

 **And if anyone is wondering how Zero is using magic so easily, remember that he was virtually perfect control over it in a way that normal wizards don't because he's a ghoul, so controlling and directing his spells to do what he wants is extremely easy. Of course, wizards still have a few advantages. For example, Zero used dimensional manipulation to shrink the furniture he bought, while a normal wizard would use transfiguration. Regardless of what anything else might say, in this fic directly manipulating space takes way more magical power to do than transfiguration, so Zero wasted a crapton of power that he didn't need to use to get the same effect, because he didn't know the efficient way to do it.**


	12. Chapter 10: Carneval, the Preparation

**Shoutout to Dieter17 for the review. Yes, Zero could go find martial artists or soldiers and the like to eat and gain their memories to speed up his learning curve with fighting, but just like when he was learning to walk he has to learn to fight in his own body, so he still has to actually learn to fight himself. His memory stealing ability is powerful, but it has its limitations. This fic will have a strong Harry, but he's not going to have instant jumps in power, unless the plot** _ **makes**_ **him have a jump in power due to what the main plot is going to be about. So, if you're hoping for a Harry that can steamroll over everybody and everything, stick around for a while and he'll show up eventually.**

 **It also occurred to me that not everybody knows what the Seikirei are. Essentially, they're hot aliens with superpowers that have a supernatural bond with the first person they kiss, who is called their Ashikabi. They are flawlessly loyal to their Ashikabi, to the point that the Ashikabi can be severely abusive and they'll still love the Ashikabi without a complaint. There's 108 of them, and the lower the number the more powerful the Seikirei, on average. Things get fuzzy when you get to the lower numbers and single digits, where the Seikirei are old enough that skill starts to be a factor. Harry is the Ashikabi of the 04 Seikirei, considered to be the most bloodthirsty and powerful aside from the 01 Seikirei, who's gone into hiding.**

 **Chapter 10: Carneval, the Preparation**

"Zero if I wasn't laying down right now I would be worshiping you," Nishiki told me informatively. We had the beds I'd taken unshrunk in one of the apartments, and all of us ghouls were sprawled over the beds like a bunch of idiots. Hinami was lying on top of a huge pile of all the pillows, over in the corner. Nishiki was splayed outward like a starfish. Ayato was laying with his hands behind his neck. Touka was laying on her back with her arms above her head, stretching upwards, and I was lying facedown like I'd fallen from a high place onto the blanket. Kara was standing looking at us like we were a bunch of idiots. None of us really cared. It had been over a month since we'd slept on a bed.

"Please don't, we don't want to be a bad influence on Hina-chan," I countered, and Nishiki deadpanned at me.

"Funny, how low your standards are if you're willing to worship Zero-chan after one night of sleeping," Kara snarked. Nishiki sighed, knowing that if he said something back, she'd cut off a limb. Especially since she knew that he could grow them back.

"Good morning to you to," Kaneki said sarcastically. Kara smirked, but didn't harm him. For the moment, anyway.

"Okay," I rolled over, so my mouth was facing away from the blankets so I could talk easier. "So, we're all up now?" A round of 'yes' phrases came from the room, ranging from Hina-chan's demure "hai" to Nishiki's "fuck you." "Then it's time to get to work," I grinned, and hopped off of my bed. I walked over to the wall and used my newest magical creation, a spell that placed an illusion over something to change its color. The wall turned completely white, with a rough map of the wards of Tokyo. Near the center, in ward 1, was a tiny tower drawing, and on the docks was a primitive house. We were in an unclaimed apartment on the second floor, so I could leave the map there as long as I wanted, and I planned on using it to coordinate our ambitions.

"... a map?" Hinami guessed.

"Yes, a map," I nodded, not getting annoyed at her because, well, even though she was older than me by a little less than a year she was still innocent. She was still a child.

"A map," Ayato realized where I was going with it.

"Yes, a map, now shut the fuck up." Yeah, I wasn't going to treat him like Hina-chan. "So, we're here, obviously, and there's MBI tower where the big bad people are that enforce the law. They're the CCG of this city." I pointed to the house, and then the tower drawing in turn. Then, I turned back to face them, the group sitting on the edges of their beds and shaking the last of their sleep from themselves. "So, to make a successful crime syndicate we're going to need four things, the four things that you need for any successful business. One, we need manpower. We've got that for now," I pointed to us, "because I don't think many things are going to be able to stop a group of S+ class ghouls when we want something, but once we've gotten the group on its feet we're going to need minions of different kinds so we don't have to do everything all the time. Second, we need a base of operations. We're in ours, but we'll find a different place for the minions once we have them, so they don't have access to where we live. I'm not that trusting. Third, we need money. Kara's going to help us with that." I nodded to my Seikirei, and shit, was that still strange to say. "Fourth, we need weapons for all of our minions, and then some. And I don't just mean guns and things. I mean we need people, guns, knives, swords, bombs, poison, blackmail, we need _everything_ or when the law finds one of our strongholds our minions will all die. Which is why Carneval's first job will be to raid MBI's weapon caches." Four dots appeared around the city, none of any of them too close to each other. They were in a square, each halfway between the four cardinal directions of north, south, east and west. "MBI can't store all of its weapons in one place, due to the Japanese laws that restrict ownership of weaponry. Now, I would have Kara just walk in and demand all the shit, but not even she's allowed to take more than a certain amount of supplies for the Seikirei Disciplinary Squad. The weapons are stored in a huge metal vault that not even Kara could get into if she wanted to. She's tried. Imagine her during puberty, and you get the picture." I could see most of them shiver at the idea, and Kara _grinned_ madly.

"Okay, so we're going to break into vaults that not even the strongest of us can break into?" Ayato groaned.

"No, we're got fucking _magic_ , we're just going to walk in and take what we want," I told them.

"... okay, what?" Kaneki didn't get it.

"We're going to teleport in, and teleport back out. As many times as we want," I shrugged, "As long as we see the inside first, then we'll be able to take as much as we want whenever we want."

"... That's not fair at all," Ayato laughed happily.

"It's their fault for not having magical defenses," I gloated.

"Ha, isn't being logical fun?" Touka smiled.

"So, today we're going to make a place to keep everything," I told them, leaving the illusion attached to the wall as I walked away. "I was planning on dedicating half of the basement to storing weapons, and half to a training space. Luck for us, we've got six people capable of magic, and three of us need practice with using magic for the first time." I saw five identical grins from the ghouls. Kara gave me a pointed look. "Don't worry, you'll get more satisfying things to break than a few walls," I assured her.

"There _is_ just one problem with your whole plan," Kara spoke up. When she saw that she had all of our attention, she continued, "MBI has surveillance satellites looking over the entire city at all times, and the moment we stockpile the weapons here, their satellite is going to send them a little alert that it found a suspicious amount of metal all in one place."

"... that's not fair," Kaneki sighed.

"Your fault for not having a lead vault to keep your stolen things in," Karasuba told him happily.

"Okay, so no storing guns in the basement," I rubbed my eyes. We had knives to MBI's throat with our magic, and MBI had knives to our throat with their surveillance technology. We had the first move, but as things were now the first time we tried anything they'd be _all_ over our asses.

"Not unless you can find a basement ten stories down," Nishiki grumbled. Oh, that's right, he was going to school before we left, like Touka. Come to think of it I didn't know what kind of student he was, but I was too lazy to find out anything about the grouchy ghoul at the time.

"Nishiki, thanks for volunteering," I smiled all of a sudden.

"... what?" he tensed suspiciously.

"You're going to make us a new basement a few hundred feet down where it can't be seen by the Rich Asshole's satellite. Make sure it doesn't flood," I informed him. He stared at me for a moment, and then slumped backwards onto the bed, groaning. The rest of us snickered.

"Right, magic," Karasuba mused.

"Not fair, right?" I laughed. "Okay, now let's go break things."

XXXXXXX

For a bunch of first-timers, the newest magicals of our group were doing pretty well. I told them to use magic how it seemed the most natural, and it meant that he had three new completely unique ways to break things. Hina-chan fired projectiles made of raw magic at her target in the shape of an spearpoint, or an arrowhead. A wedge, she fired a wedge-shaped blade that cut through whatever it hit with extreme prejudice. Nishiki had gotten creative and coated his Kagune with magic that ran along the bladed edge at extreme speeds. Whatever resistance there might have been to his Kagune as it cut through the building's walls, it wasn't there with his magic making his Kagune even _more_ unnaturally sharp. I saw Karasuba eyeing the spell jealously. Touka made a spell similar to mine, in that she'd punch or kick and hurl a blast of concussive force from the limb. It was smaller though, more of a precision tool than my shock-and-awe style. It also might have been because all three of them had _extremely_ small magical reserves. They only had enough magic to use their spells a handful of times before they were out of gas. They must've needed longer to fully develop their magical cores. I had them stop before they could hurt themselves.

They'd knocked out about a quarter of the walls we needed to. The apartment complex had a steel frame, with drywall and wood in between. We could knock out the walls as much as we wanted, but there were certain places we needed to leave alone so that the steel frame still supported the rest of the building. Maybe when we had the time I'd find a spell that would reinforce the building enough for us to get rid of those too, but I couldn't just yet. When the newbie magicals were done, I decided that I was going to take advantage of an "opportune moment" and learn the basics of swordplay. But to do that, I needed a sword. So, I went upstairs and grabbed the case of our Tsunagi quinque, and the Scorpion 1/56. Kara literally _drooled_ when I pulled the Bikaku weapon out of its container.

"This is the mass-produced weapon for investigators high enough rank to use a Quinque," I told the whole gang, which was standing in front of me in a rough semi-circle. "It can be out of the case for five hours before needed to return for a half-hour to recover. It's still living tissue, and the case keeps it alive. We, however, can cheat. All Rc cells need to live is magic, so as long as you have it on your person it should absorb the magic you subconsciously leak outwards. Use the case when you can though, Quinque's aren't all that inconspicuous. It's five feet long from tip to pommel, with a foot and a half long hilt. It has no guard, or anything but a grip and a cutting edge. It's easy to make, and it'll cut through a ghoul's skin. It's perfect for us to learn on." I handed it to Kara, and I felt the… wow she actually felt legitimate lust when she looked at the blade. She made eye contact with me, and I blushed heavily. The older ghouls frowned, wondering what was going on there. I didn't tell them the thoughts that had gone through Kara's head. She'd known I could read her thoughts ever since I'd said the name of her fake Ashikabi, so she knew exactly what she'd done. I pulled the second Tsunagi out of the case and faced her.

"Zero, why aren't you just drinking her blood or something?" Kaneki asked inquisitively. I walked to one of the open spaces we had, so Kara could show me the basic stances and movements.

"Kara was grown from a test tube," I responded, "she doesn't have even a single Rc cell in her body. I checked already by doing what you suggested. Apart from tasting like an angel pissing on your tongue because of the amount of magic she's got flowing through her body at all times, I got nothing. Without Rc cells in the meal, you can't get memories from it." That had been frustrating to find out. I needed a way to spread the tiny creatures in a way that didn't mass-produce ghouls. I had a lot of things I needed to find out how to do, and I was probably feeling a lot more urgent than I should be considering that I was immortal.

"Ah," Kaneki nodded in understanding.

"So," Kara asked me, "what style do you want to learn?"

"What do you mean?" I asked for clarification.

"What kind of swordsman do you want to be?" she expanded, still going over my head. She sighed, and explained, "I know Iaido, Kendo, Kenjutsu, Chinese blade arts, western Fencing, Nitojutsu, I even learned knife combat styles. What do you want to learn?" I took a moment to just be impressed before I answered. That was a _lot of fucking sword styles_. How the hell did she keep track of them all while she was fighting? "I don't use specific styles," she told me, as if she was reading my mind, "when you reach a certain level you stop following the forms and just let muscle memory take over, letting you plan and act faster. And yes, I can see to your end of our bond now, somewhat. I can hear what you're thinking if it's… loud enough." Ah, that explains it.

"I think that Iaido is out, because we won't have our blades sheathed under any circumstances that I know of," I mused, rolling my wrist around and getting used to having the blade in my hand. "I'm thinking Kenjutsu, and Fencing, for now. I'll probably pick up everything else over the years."

"Alright," she nodded, and started poking my elbows, wrists, knees, and other joints to get me into a basic stance.

"Why those two?" Touka wondered.

"Well," I said as Kara poked my spine to tell me to improve my posture, "Fencing because it's a _fast_ way to fight with a blade. Stabbing will always be faster than slashing, because it covers less distance. And Fencing is one of the few sword styles that actually teaches you specific ways to parry attacks. Kenjutsu was easier. Kendo was created from Kenjutsu, and is simpler, but Kenjutsu was created for _war_. Kendo was made for sports competitions, Kenjutsu was made to _kill_. And no other sword style from anywhere else in the world has the same level of efficiency and deadliness that Kenjutsu possesses. So, there you have it." I shrugged, making Kara smack me across the back of my head. She didn't hold her strength back, so she split my skull. I went back into the stance.

"Good, you've got it," Kara nodded, "now don't move for the next five hours."

"... what?" I spoke up, certain that I was hearing things.

"You can regenerate, right?" she asked rhetorically, "so we're going to give you a crash course on swordsmanship. You're going to hold that stance until you do it in your sleep _accidentally_. Then, when you go into that stance at the first sign of trouble, _then_ , I will start teaching you how to swing the blade. You're lucky that you're a ghoul because if you're willing to put up with a lot you can learn a lot faster than any human ever could. You're going to 'cut and learn,' the way samurai improved by fighting with their life on the line for battle after battle. You're going to fight me over and over until you're either a fleshy smear on the ground or you're a swordsman. Understood?" I nodded. Internally I was somewhat happy that she could be a dominant personality towards me, what with the slave bond and all. I… I did _care_ for her, maybe not love her but we were definitely compatible, our soul bond was evidence of that. Her story was too close to mine for me to not empathize.

"Can I not do this?" Nishiki raised his hand. Hinami stomped on his toes.

"You still gotta find a way to make us a new basement," Touka poked him in the shoulder.

"Fuck you," Nishiki sighed half-heartedly.

"So where are we going to get our minions?" Kaneki continued as if Touka and Nishiki weren't having a catfight behind him.

"I was thinking of finding Ashikabi actually," I told him easily. The stance didn't strain my ghoulish muscles at all, but it was starting to get uncomfortable. I'd be stiff as hell when Kara let me go.

"Huh, yeah, that'd make sense," Kaneki mused.

"If we got a bunch of Ashikabi to work under us we'd have elite teams that could handle whatever we needed them to," I was about to shrug, but thought better of it when I felt the amused eagerness through my bond to Kara.

' _You're enjoying this way too much,'_ I sent at her experimentally, and the only sign that she heard me was a chuckle.

' _I've never been a teacher to a student that actually wants to learn,'_ she sent back. ' _MBI had me teach the third iteration of the Disciplinary Squad, but neither of them have the mindset of a warrior.'_

' _Kids with weapons?'_ I guessed. She sent an affirmative answer without words. The entire exchange had taken a fraction of a second.

"Plus, if the Seikirei are being abused by their Ashikabi, we could save them," I added.

"... I didn't know you were that altruistic," Ayato narrowed his eyes.

"No, I mean we could 'save' them, gaining the undying loyalty of a bunch of emotionally unstable and easily manipulated super soldiers," I clarified.

"Right, that makes a lot more sense," he mumbled.

"So what's with the other Quinque?" Kaneki changed the subject, looking towards Scorpion 1/56's case. It was a lot bigger than the Tsunagis' case, because it needed enough space for 56 individual knives, even if they were small in their dormant state. Behind him, Nishiki yelled something about Touka's cappuccinos having too much milk in them, and Touka yelled something about Nishiki being an idiot that barely was employed long enough at Anteiku to know how to brew a normal cup of coffee, much less a cappuccino. I almost yelled at Nishiki for insulting Touka's cappuccinos, that was my favorite drink, after all.

"Everyone should start carrying around a few of them, just in case," I said with sudden seriousness, enough that Nishiki and Touka's argument halted in its tracks. When we'd arrived at Tokyo we thought we'd be the top of the food chain with five S+ class ghouls and a Kakuja, all of whom were magical. My encounter with Karasuba had utterly shattered that fantasy. We might have escaped Kakurega, but we still needed to keep our ghoul nature hidden from the general public, so we needed a way to fight opponents, possibly superhuman opponents, without resorting to our Kagune. Therefore even if we weren't used to fighting with knives, we were going to be armed at all times. We might not be able to hide the Tsunagi's in active form on us, but a few knives? That was no issue, we could have a pair or trifecta of knives on us and no one would know. Best part was, because they were so small they'd need an extraordinarily small amount of magic to stay alive. Kaneki shrugged, and kicked the latch on the case. The lock came undone, and Kaneki hooked a finger under the lid and opened the case. The whole thing was lined with tiny orbs the size of marbles. Kaneki pulled one out of its slot, and it morphed into a knife with a six-inch blade and a square tip. He threw it up and caught it on its way down.

"Wow is that balanced," Kaneki approved, "I should learn to throw knives, these would be scary flying through the air at you."

"I've suddenly developed an interest in knife throwing," Nishiki informed us, taking three of the knives from the case. Touka scoffed, and took a pair herself. Hina-chan grabbed one.

"Just find somewhere to hide them. If you need new clothes just take Kara's old jacket with the bird symbols on its shoulders and take whatever you want from the shops," I told them. It was good to be a bully. A poke hit me in the shoulder. I looked to Kara, who still had her finger extended.

"Stand up straight, and then go back to your stance," she instructed. I did as told, standing up straight and giving my legs a half-second break where they felt _amazing_ like right after stretching, and then I dropped back into the stance. "Good," she nodded after a moment of looking at me, "you learned it quickly. Now you just have to get your body to know it as well as you do." My lips twitched in amusement at her instructor-ish tone. It was… it was cute.

Kara's entire head turned red, and she was caught between embarrassment, happiness, anger, and indignation. Her arm flashed, and my head fell from my shoulders, her basic response to anything she didn't immediately understand. When it was back where it was supposed to be, Kara sighed.

"Still not as satisfying as it should be," she shook her head mournfully.

"How are you going to make our basement?" Hinami asked Nishiki several feet away from us. Nishiki grumbled under his breath, but couldn't resist the younger girl's innocence.

"I was thinking of compacting the ground into superdense walls. It would make the space we needed, and make it structurally strong all at once," he told her, "The hard part is going to be keeping the place lit, it's not like the power lines go all the way down there. Suddenly, his left fingertip started glowing.

"That's how," I snickered. My illusion spell was the best.

"Right…" he nodded lazily.

"Well, just try and have it done by the end of the week," I shrugged, "It's Tuesday now, I want to get the weapons around the shift change between the weekend and the Monday shift."

"Sure," he treated it seriously. He still acted lazy, but he wasn't being caustic or argumentative.

"Well, don't mind if I take advantage of that clothes offer, I haven't had a fresh pair of clothes in a month," Touka grinned, "I'll see you in a few hours. Come on, Hina-chan, you're getting clothes too."

"Yeah, just leave me here alone with the sadist," I chuckled half-heartedly.

"Oh?" Kaneki raised an eyebrow from where he was standing. Which was just a few feet from us.

"You don't count," I told him matter-of-factly, "Mr. 'I'm not like you ghouls.'" He groaned.

"You're still not letting that go?" he complained.

XXXXXXX

"Now the most basic movements of Kenjutsu are the Happo Giri, the 8 directions cuts," Kara stood in front of me, her Tsunagi held in her hand in a grip that looked deceptively casual. "Now what you need to picture as you're executing a cut is that your sword is not a sword, it is a _brush_ , and you're drawing calligraphy on your target. The eight cuts are representative of the 8 brush movements in Shodo calligraphy, and when you've written death onto your target, it will die." She smoothly executed a slash from a sheathed position, and then an overhead slash. I was surprised by how philosophical she was getting. I mean she was an intelligent person, but she didn't act like a scholar, she seemed more like a mad dog than a philosopher. I guess that it just took the right topic to bring out the hidden treasures of her personality. "Stop getting distracted," she commanded. I shook my head, clearing it of unnecessary thoughts, and raised my own blade. I imitated her as she ran me through all of the 8 directions cuts.

"Excellent," she nodded, "I can't see any flaws in your stance or technique. Repeat the 8 cuts until your arms keep cutting without you telling them to."

"Understood," I intoned, going through a horizontal slash from left to right.

"Tonight, at sundown we'll have our first spar," she said with the same professionalism in her voice, but I felt the childish glee that she felt at having an Ashikabi that she could actually spar against, if "spar" was a word that could apply to the situation.

"Tomorrow we're going looking for Ashikabi to recruit," I told her, "as important as this is, we can't neglect everything else. We're still having a spar every night, and I'll practice in the mornings."

"That's probably best," she sighed, "you can't rush mastery of a weapon, it has to sink in. The spars will be worth more than any practice you could do anyway. You're learning the forms at a freakish pace as it is." I didn't have the heart to tell her that I had perfect awareness of my entire body's position at all times, and my memory was… extraordinary, to say the least. The human brain has around 100 billion neurons in the human (or humanoid) brain. However my main organ of thought was my Rc cells, and a full 48th of my body was Rc cells. That doesn't seem like a very big fraction, but that was _770_ billion cells that stored my memories and housed my logic and reason. Plus, my Kakuhou had trillions of Rc cells packed into a pair of organs along my spine. My ability to remember things was comparable to a machine. I wasn't instantly learning everything the way she _wanted_ me to, in that it all became muscle memory and instinctive, but I would never make mistakes during practice, and that would make my learning curve faster by a bit. Not by a huge amount, but a bit. On the other hand, _every day_ I would be fighting an unmatched master of the blade that had physical abilities that _dwarfed_ mine. You learn more from a single real fight than a month of even the best normal training. We'd see how my learning curve was after a few days of that.

"We're back!" Touka called. She had a duffel bag stuffed full of new clothes for all of us, and she went past us pretty quickly to go change, Hinami close behind her.

"Princess," Karasuba snorted, and I almost tripped, laughing at the idea that someone would call _Touka_ a princess.

"She's more of an heiress, actually," I snickered, "she doesn't have the composure of a princess, nor the dignity."

"I heard that!" I heard Touka yell from the top of the stairwell that led to our apartments.

"You didn't deny it, you love being pampered as much as the next girl!" I shouted back. I flinched, my Tsunagi whipping across me to parry the slash that Karasuba had used while my attention was split. She didn't put all her strength behind it, so I was able to halt the blow. She smiled happily, and it was (for her) such a smile of innocent happiness that I took a second to realize that she was speaking to me about my parry, critiquing my footwork. Across our bond, I saw the reason why she was so happy. When she was being raised by MBI they controlled her physical development down to a genetic level, and the biological tampering that they did to her brain caused her to become a sociopath at an extremely young age. Then, she was told that as a Seikirei her purpose in life was to find and serve her Ashikabi, someone that she would identify and serve with love. She, naturally, was terrified, because what person could ever come to love a psychotic killer like her? Then along I came, and she found her Ashikabi, someone that accepted her completely. She was falling for me so quickly that it made "love at first sight" look glacial by comparison. It was incredibly flattering to see that every new thing about me she found out was a pleasant surprise. I was a ghoul, a killer myself. I was powerful. I was interested in the things she cared about (weapons, slaughter, etc.), I learned quickly and might be a challenge to her in battle fairly soon.

"You really think I could stand up to you?" I asked her, surprised.

"Skill can always match up to superior physical abilities," she explained, before pushing my blade to the side and poking me in the chest. "Also, I believe that you do actually have the ability to match me physically, at least in terms of speed."

"You're not joking," my face tightened, "what do you know?"

"You've been able to show enough physical strength that agility and flexibility aren't an issue for you," she listed, "So you don't need to build up the strength to lift and swing your sword and hold the stances. And, you may not see it, but even when you were fighting me as hard as you could your body wasn't working as hard as it could."

"... what the hell do you mean?" I gave her a confused look, my sword falling to my side.

"When you were trying to dodge when we first met, your muscles weren't clenching and moving all that fast," she poked me in the arms, her cool fingertips making my skin tingle on contact. I'd only ever had physical contact with Touka outside of combat, and a part of me craved that comfort, so I didn't resist her actions. "What I think is that when you were made into a ghoul, you got lazy. You only fought weak opponents, and so your reaction time rusted and slowed. You're so used to fighting things that are so physically inferior to you that the moment someone comes around that can match or equal you, you fail spectacularly. That's part of the reason we're going to be sparring. I'm going to _force_ you to get faster, and faster, until you can fight me head-on and match me blow for blow. I will be stronger physically, but I have a feeling that if you bring your Kagune into the mix things will even out." She smiled innocently, for real this time, "you have the potential to keep me from being alone ever again, and I'm not going to let you stay weak." I frowned slightly, uncomfortably with her being so open with me after only a few days. Then, she took my hand and placed in in the center of her chest, where I could feel her heart beating.

"Can you feel my heartbeat?" she asked. I nodded weakly, partly in embarrassment at the fact that my hand was pressed to her bosom, and partly uncomfortable with being so close to someone that did try to kill me just a day earlier. "This heart wasn't there a day ago. This heart was a gift that you gave to me. When our bond opened, and I could feel you through it, I felt your emotions, your passions, and it… it changed me, feeling something that powerful in such an unrefined and intimate way. I am a sociopath, I know that I'm… I'm broken, and I didn't care, but after seeing what I was missing," she teared up, looking me in the eye, "I can't bear not to want it for myself, and you, my Ashikabi-sama, are my way there. You gave me the chance to have a heart. How could I not fall for you?"

"Well," a voice drawled in amusement, "I didn't know we had free shows here." Both Kara and my heads whipped around to see Nishiki standing there with his hands clapping lazily. He was at the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly, an aura of cold fear swept over him.

"Nishiki," I said innocently, a serene smile on my face, but with a blackish-purple aura licking out from behind me. A huge scaled lion-face seemed to emerge from my shadow, staring him in the eye. Blood dribbled from the corners of its mouth, and its cat-like pupils constricted, staring Nishiki in the eye. It growled softly. " _Killing the mood is prohibited in Carneval._ " I told him courteously.

Nishiki paled, nodded _really_ quickly, and "walked slowly" up the stairs, fleeing in terror and muttering about "scary little kids."

"What?" I asked Kara, who was openly laughing next to me as the aura of death dispersed.

"Nothing," she held a hand to her abdomen as she indulged her sense of humor, "you just reminded me of someone." I saw flashes of a terrifyingly powerful woman with purple hair acting like a housewife in her mind. I nodded, not verbalizing what she didn't want said aloud. Kara understood what Miya had done now, after finding her Ashikabi and the changes that came with me, but she still held a grudge against the fake housewife for plenty of reasons.

"Come on," I took her hand, pulling her into the center of the open space, "let's have that spar."

"Sure, Zero-chan," she nodded, letting me pull her along.

"You're not bothered by the age difference between us?" I wondered as we walked.

"It's only about six years," she shrugged, "you're thirteen, right? Six years isn't much compared to how long we will live." It was at that moment, that I made a decision that would guide me for the next few years. I decided, that I would find a way to give her immortality. I would not let her whither and die as I continued to live. I would make her a ghoul, so that her potent magic could sustain her forever. Touka was already safe. She was magical, and she was strong enough for now. Kara was even stronger, but she would grow old. She would live at least twice as long as a human, but compared to me it was still the blink of an eye. I felt her squeeze my hand as she saw my thoughts across our bond. The bond pulsed, and strengthened, fed by our increasing emotional bond.

Then, my head went flying without my body before I could react to the thought that flashed across her mind almost at the same time that her blade passed through my neck.

That bitch. That sick, twisted, sexy, bitch.

XXXXXXX

 **Yay! Chapter 10!**

 **10,000 views! I've crossed the threshold. I think. I have no idea if that's a good number or not. Anyways thank you guys for all the reviews, favs, follows and everything, and I'll be back with chapter 11 real soon**


	13. Chapter 11: Carneval, First Act

**Chapter 11: Carneval, First Act**

"I don't care, it's still hilarious," Nishiki smirked from across the room. "You're the Chimaera, the SSS class ghoul, a being that makes the entire CCG whimper in terror, and you're regularly pounded into the pavement by a hot chick with a sword." Nishiki chuckled.

"Shut up and focus, we're busy," Touka growled, and Nishiki was about to respond in kind when I cut into the conversation, trying to keep my dignity even as I stood there in my shredded clothes, which were a collection of torn and cut fabric that resembled a sniper's camouflage suit. Karasuba had kept me from changing after our last spar, so I was forced to go through the meeting looking like I was homeless. Karasuba stopped me from changing in time by taking up all the time I _would've_ used with an extended spar that went on a lot longer than I wanted it too. There's only so many times you can take damage that would make any normal doctor classify you as "deceased" before it _really_ starts to get annoying. On the other hand my coordination and balance improved significantly. It wasn't enough to close the gap between me and Kara by a noticeable amount, but it was a lot easier to walk and move around now. At least I didn't have to actively concentrate on keeping my balance as I walked to stay standing as I walked. Funny how violence was the answer.

" _Anyway_ " I growled, "Nishiki and Ayato will go after the northwest stockpile. Touka and Kaneki will go after the northeast. I will go after the southwest, and we'll leave the southeast stockpile alone. We only have so much space after all, and it will make MBI underestimate us, thinking that we only had the ability to go after three at a time. Hinami will stay here and keep the weapons organized as we deliver them and place them onto the racks in the Cellar." Hinami nodded proudly, happy to be given a job. "Kara's going to lead me into the stockpiles, with the excuse that she needs weapons for the discipline squad. The moment that I've seen all three I'll pop back here and take all of the teams to their targets. Everything starts at sundown, so be ready. Yes, Nishiki, I'm talking about you." Nishiki grumbled half-heartedly. "Alright, Kara, let's go," I nodded to my Seikirei, who grinned happily. I zipped up the hoodie that I was wearing, and I teleported us out of my apartment. MBI had to have been watching us through their satellites, but I would confuse them in any way I possibly could.

Me and Kara we wearing something that would make our job just a little bit easier. I had my favorite kind of pants on, loose black cargo pants, and flat-bottomed sneaker shoes that skateboarders like to wear. A t-shirt in purple was under my black zip-up hoodie with a cartoon lion on the left shoulder. I didn't have a mask on, that would come later. Kara had a battle kimono on (in black, of course, she'd never wear another color) and she had tight elastic pants in an American style that didn't hinder her movement and showed even more leg than her old outfits, even though they were completely covered.

We popped back into existence in an alley not far from the first stockpile in the northwest of the city. Kara took the lead, and I followed her like I was her subordinate. It only took us a few minutes to get to the stockpile, which was an underground structure underneath a parking garage that wasn't detectable from the surface.

"The door's over here," Kara told me, leading me towards the stairwell of the garage. We took the stairs down three stories, and found a heavy steel door at the bottom. It had a sliding window to look through, and after Kara rapped on the door harder than any human could, making a loud ringing noise, the window opened and a grunt in a military uniform made eye contact with the two of us. At the sight of Karasuba, we were let through the door. It was a full foot thick, and had hydraulic hinges to open it and keep it shut when they wanted. It wasn't nearly enough to keep Kara out of it, or someone of a magical ghoul's caliber, but for a normal human it would take an extreme amount of effort to force your way through it. It would take me some work too. Sure, I could cut through it with my Kagune, but it still probably weighed several hundred pounds at a minimum. Behind the door was a squadron of heavily equipped men, with full body armor and everything. One of them had a crossbow loaded with darts with pods just below the tips with a kind of liquid in them. I assumed that they were tranquilizer doses, in the case that a Seikirei like, say, _Karasuba_ , tried to steal MBI's weapons.

"I'm here to get a new sword," Karasuba informed them grumpily, holding up her old nodachi. It was a weapon that had served her well, but it wasn't even in the same league as a Quinque. She was somewhat attached to it, but in the end it was an object given to her by MBI, and it was replaceable. She'd informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to make her break her own weapons for any reason ever again, because she wanted to collect them, but she went along with my plan just this once. The man nodded, trying to act like he wasn't terrified to have _the_ Karasuba in front of him in a grumpy mood. The room was essentially a steel box, with benches along the sides for the guards. Along the back wall was the huge vault door with a camera to the side. The camera had a small red light above it, which flashed green for a moment, before the vault door started making the noises that come from large pieces of heavy metal moving out of their "locked" position. Kara and I stepped up to the vault door, careful to give it the space to swing outwards. The soldiers around us eyed me speculatively, wondering who the _fuck_ would spend their time around the infamous Black Seikirei, and be as at ease as I was. The door finally rumbled to a silence, and it started to swing outwards. The utterly _enormous_ metal door opened with the sluggishness of really really heavy things, and revealed a short hallway into the rest of the vault, with an MBI soldier sitting in an office behind bulletproof glass, where he could keep an eye on the vault's contents. He apparently also had the controls to the vault's door. That was… convenient, actually.

' _Kara, change of plans,'_ I transferred across our link, and Kara nodded slightly to show that she'd understood, getting my entire message beyond just what my words were saying. Direct mental links were amazing. We walked through the hallway without any sign of our subterfuge. The man behind the glass eyed us carefully as we did. He didn't seem to trust us, I observed silently, an ever so slightly amused smirk faintly showing on my relaxed expression. Inside the vault… well… even I had to admit it was impressive. It put even the CCG's weapons cache to shame.

The room was at least the size of a commercial aircraft hangar. It was separated into "small arms" which was all of the normal guns over on the left side of the room, and the "heavy weapons" on the right side which were composed of explosives, launchers, and similar equipment made for breaking things and breaking things well. The room started with the smallest weapons the closer you were to the door, with handguns and grenades on their respective sides of the vault, and progressed to the larger and more expensive and more effective weapons the farther away you were from the entrance, which was where the assault rifles, snipers, RPGs, machine guns, and even a few artillery weapons like a Howitzer and a flak gun. It was an unreasonable amount of weaponry for a single, privately-owned company to possess, especially in a country like Japan where the weapon laws were extremely strict, but when I remembered that the company had the city under lockdown just as tight as the ghoul-infested Kakurega, I understood. I assumed that MBI was holding the city as a way to protect the Seikirei, and because other nations knew that the possibility of infiltration and outright invasion was always present. In the case that the city became a war zone the sheer number of killing tools in front of me wasn't so strange. Kara immediately ignored all of the guns and walked across the small arms section to the wall, which had an orderly display of blades. She threw her busted nodachi on the floor haphazardly, and made a show of looking over the bunch of weapons on the wall. She gave me a mental nudge.

That was my cue.

I turned and made eye contact with the soldier, trying something so completely new that I had no idea if he would even survive the attempt. " **Dominion,"** I whispered, and shot a sliver of magic between us like a fine strand of silk. It hit his head right between his eyes, and I felt an extremely disorienting feeling as our minds were opened up to each other. It was paralyzing, to suddenly feel an alien set of thought processes right up against my own. It was like being squished against someone in a car seat. Cramped, and derailing. However I had experience with having a mind linked to mine, both in the way that I absorbed memories from my meals, and from my bond to Karasuba, so I quickly adjusted and exerted my willpower over him. I conquered his thought processes under the weight of my own considerable store of memories and willpower, and I forced him to simply sit at his desk as if everything was completely fine, no matter what he saw happen in front of him. He essentially wouldn't do his job of keeping the vault safe, but he would still respond when a superior checked in with him, so no alarms would be raised on account of him being missing. When I ended the mind spell, it felt like waking up from a deep sleep, and I realized that I'd completely lost track of the real world. And my Kakugan were active.

"Strange," I touched under my eyes lightly as my ghoul eyes reverted to their normal purple color, if purple could ever be called a normal color for eyes.

"Did you do it?" Karasuba asked.

"Yeah," I nodded, "let's keep going." I mumbled, still a little dazed from the mental feedback that my spell caused. That was something that was going to take a lot of experimentation, practice, and revision. There was no way I could let telepathy incapacitate me as much as my enemy.

"Got enough to pop back when it's time?" she confirmed.

"More than enough," I nodded, still filtering a few stray memories that I'd accidentally stolen from the MBI soldier that I'd mentally dominated, all from his early childhood when he was in primary school. Useless memories. Karasuba took the lead again, walked out of the exit with a look of frustration on her face, like she couldn't find a satisfactory replacement for her nodachi. If her grumpy look had scared the troops into trembling on our way in, her irritated look froze the men in terror on our way out. I would've laughed but I was still recovering from the last little bit of daze from the mental strain that my spell had caused. As we passed the guard in the control box just inside the vault, I was his nose and eyes bleed just a little bit. We left the weapons cache at a lazy pace that suited Karasuba's personality perfectly.

As we were moving towards the second cache, Kara eyed me speculatively.

"I couldn't see what happened there with that spell, you didn't fuck yourself up, did you?" she demanded.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," I nodded, all of my previous difficulties having been completely resolved between the guard room and the streets. "I cast a spell that would use my mind to dominate another's completely. What I didn't expect was for his mind to be comparable to my own mental strength. How is mental strength measured anyways?" I shook my head, "back on topic, I overwrote a part of his mind, and it was a lot harder to do than I thought it would be, and the spell didn't work perfectly. I'll fix it." I finished with an assurance.

"Good," she nodded in satisfaction. She didn't tolerate any kind of complacency either in herself or her Ashikabi. The second vault was under an apartment complex, and we did the same thing that we did with the first. This time I was expecting the weight of the guard's mind as it slammed into mine, and so I wasn't as affected as the first time. I was only dazed until we left the vault, not all the way to the street. It was something that I was never going to be able to use in real combat, that much was completely clear. That didn't make it any less useful, but I wasn't going to be able to read people's mind while fighting like I did with Karasuba without trying because of our psychic link. The vault had roughly the same contents, with the organization being slightly different due to slightly different numbers of the small arms.

The last vault was under a collection of small shops and a few food stands, accessed by a door to the side that led straight down into the vault's entryway. The soldiers there were already expecting us, probably having been warned by the other vault's guards. That could be a problem if we let it happen, but hopefully it wouldn't. Once we were inside, I dominated the mind of the guard in the office just inside, and commanded him to shut the vault's door. I grit my teeth and pushed past the disorientation from forcing my mind to overcome another's, and I teleported, leaving Kara in the vault. I reappeared in Carneval's apartment, the other ghouls ready. They were all in their combat uniforms that we'd worn when going up against the CCG, but we had completely different masks. They were identical white venetian carnival masks **(AN: Venetian masks look like the picture for this fic)** that were made to look like a human face. The only thing that set them apart was the color painted (with color-changing charms, of course) on the lips, and into names on their right cheeks. The kanji for their CCG monikers was the only difference aside from color on their right cheek, displaying who they were to the world. The color was matched to the color of each ghouls' magic. Hinami's color was pure white, the soft white of clouds and the white of a flawless dove feather. Her markings were the same pure ivory white of the rest of the mask, but had fine black lines tracing the outlines of the markings so that they were visible. Kaneki's magic was a deep red that shifted through all the possible shades of the rosy color the way that light danced on the bottom of a pool. Nishiki's was a calm azure color, a clear color that didn't waver or change. Touka's magic was actually a striking green color not unlike the original color of my eyes, an electric, startling green. Ayato was a sickly yellow color, like a burst of yellow lightning or a wilting yellow flower. Ayato hated that particular comparison. I had a mask with a golden section around the eyes like a mask for a masquerade ball, and the face of a lion in the center of my forehead, which I slid over my face as I faced the rest of them. Our Kakugan were openly on display through the eyes of our masks, all of their eyes shifting away from the normal red of a Kakugan towards the color of their magic. Kaneki's eyes were still the same, but that was just because his magic was red, so his eyes didn't have to change color to match his magic. The masks weren't that hard to find, we were in the capital of Japan. You can always find a place to get masks in a city in Japan.

I placed my hands on the shoulders of Nishiki and Ayato, and I teleported them into the first vault. They tensed when they saw the human sitting in his office by the doorway, but when the human didn't react to our presence they assumed that I handled him already, and moved to complete their mission. They dropped a pair of duffel bags on the floor, and started shrinking weapons and ammunition to a tiny fraction of their original size and tossing them into the duffel bags. I popped back into the apartments, where the others were ready. Touka and Kaneki were quickly teleported to the second vault, and then I teleported back to the last vault, where Karasuba had slipped on her own mask, one with the kanji for "blood" in the center of her forehead in black. I started rapidly throwing shrunken weapons into my own duffel bag, something that I'd grabbed when I'd picked up Touka and Kaneki. No alarms went off yet, but the good guys were never that lucky.

XXXXXXX

"Who the hell are you?" a pink-haired girl demanded, facing Ayato and Nishiki.

"... shit, I'll handle her," Ayato stepped forward, his Ukaku sprouting from his back. There was only one reason that a girl would be in the vault without a uniform or any other kind of identification.

He was up against a Seikirei.

The girl saw Ayato's Kagune, and narrowed her eyes in confusion, but she couldn't mistake the threatening pose that Ayato had taken. She lifted her hands and curled them into fists.

"I don't know how you got in here but it's obvious you're not allowed," she declared, "You're lucky that Karasuba-sama isn't here, or you'd be dead. I'll just break every fucking bone in your body." Ayato just chuckled at the irony of that statement. He wrapped his Ukaku around his right arm, solidifying it into a crystal blade extending a few feet beyond his hand. He shot forward, firing a few shards with his Ukaku to try and keep her pinned down until he closed the distance. The pink-haired Seikirei just charged forward, confident that her Seikirei biology would protect her from any damage.

Her overconfidence was her undoing.

The Ukaku shards impaled her in the arms and thighs, severing the important tendons of the limbs or spearing into her limb close enough that trying to use the muscle attached to the tendon was excruciatingly painful as the tendon scraped across the Ukaku shard's sharp edge. She screamed, but managed to stop her charge, falling into a shaky, but disciplined stance. Ayato respected that, she was obviously a trained martial artist. It didn't stop him from stabbing his Kagune into her chest, the impossibly sharp predatory organ slipping into her flesh with ease. The girl's scream became a wet choke as her lungs flooded with blood. Ayato grinned, and tilted his mask to the side, just enough to reveal his mouth but not enough to show his eyes or nose or anything that could be used to identify him. He grinned.

"Not good enough," he told the dying Seikirei, who was desperately trying to breath as she drowned in her own blood. "You could've stood against me, probably even beaten me, if you didn't just let me hit you. It's convenient for me, so I probably shouldn't be complaining, but I just enjoy seeing the look in your eyes when you realize that you literally walked into your own death." Ayato chuckled, and cut off her left arm. The Seikirei weakly spasmed, but wasn't able to make any more noise, as her lungs didn't have any air left in them. He took a bite of the girl's flesh, and enjoyed the exquisite taste that flashed across his senses, the girl's magical power embedded in her physical body in a way that no human's ever could be. There weren't any memories from the flesh, but that was because the Seikirei didn't have any Rc cells for him to eat. He didn't really care either way, anything that the girl could've told him, Karasuba could tell him better. Karasuba used to be Benitsubasa's direct superior, after all.

"Damn man, you're really sadistic, you know that?" Nishiki laughed wryly from behind Ayato.

"It runs in the family," Ayato shrugged.

XXXXXXX

"Kaneki, hurry the fuck up!" Touka shouted at the white-haired ghoul, as she pulled ahead of him while tossing shrunken explosives into her duffel bag. Kaneki didn't verbally respond, but he did increase the pace of his repetitive actions, shrinking weapons and flinging them into his duffel bag, holding the duffel bag in his hands and grabbing the weapons with the six limbs of his Kagune.

XXXXXXX

It was completely quiet for me and Karasuba as I filled my duffel bag to the brim with weaponry. When I finally placed the last of the things into my bag, the howitzer that was shrunk to the size of a toy car, I zipped up the bag and took Karasuba's arm by the wrist. One application of focus and magical power later, and we popped into the ground floor of our apartment complex, where Hina-chan was waiting. She quickly jumped down a hole in the floor of the huge open space, and I dropped the bag down after her. I heard her catch it, and put it down away from the bottom of the shaft that went straight down for several stories. A few seconds later Touka and Kaneki arrived, teleporting through their own power and dropped their duffel bags down one at a time, and then Ayato and Nishiki teleported in, dropping their bags down to the storage room as well.

"Ayato," Touka asked, "who's blood is that?"

"Benitsubasa," Ayato told her, "she's dead." Touka shrugged. Karasuba felt a bit of amusement, no more concerned over her subordinate's death than any of us were. She'd told us all about the Disciplinary Squad and every asset that MBI might throw at us, so all of our little group knew about the girl. Truthfully, though, I didn't expect her to die so suddenly.

"What happened to her?" I wondered curiously.

"She ran straight into my Kagune," Ayato shrugged. Hinami climbed back over the edge of the hole in the floor, her Rinkaku lifting her up through the mineshaft-like tunnel quickly and without the chance of losing its hold on the walls. Her Kagune set her down gently and the pair of limbs retracted silently into her back.

"Ah, yeah, I guess that didn't end too well for her," I chuckled.

"Not too well, no," Nishiki agreed.

"All the bags of guns are stacked on the shelf you made, Shitty-Nishiki," sweet little Hina-chan told us. In perfect sync, Touka, Kaneki, Ayato, and I all did a _glorious_ spit-take. Touka started to smile nervously.

"Touka," Ayato spoke up, "did you corrupt Hina-chan with your filthy way of speaking?" Ayato kept his tone perfectly calm and cordial.

"Maybe?" Touka ventured. Kaneki and Ayato's eyes narrowed, and they lunged. Touka's Kagune sprang to life with a burst of green and red light, and she bolted, both boys hot on her heels. Karasuba snickered.

"What are senpai and Ayato going to do to Touka-chan?" Hinami asked nervously, worried that she'd gotten the girl she saw as an older sister in trouble.

"Don't worry, they won't punish her too badly. So no broken bones or anything," I waved her off. Kaneki saw Hinami as a precious link to innocence that he'd lost after accepting his "inner ghoul," or whatever. Ayato… well actually I had no idea why Ayato was so concerned but I guess siblings having fights wasn't all that weird, and maybe it was just an excuse to beat up Touka without looking like an asshole. Who knew?

Hinami didn't look too convinced, but she trusted me enough to let the matter slide.

"That was a lot easier than it could've been," Nishiki commented, pulling his mask off of his face and yawning.

"Yeah, because you got to sit back and let Ayato handle all the trouble," Karasuba countered. Nishiki would've responded by pointing out that Karasuba didn't do much either, with me being the only one of us that could use active magic, but Nishiki was more than smart enough to know that pissing off Karasuba was a stupid idea. He merely grumbled under his breath, and moved to head towards his room. A loud crunching noise sounded from behind me, and Ayato shot past me, his nose shattered and the impression of a feminine fist in the center of his face.

"Yeah! Fuck you asshole!" Touka cheered from behind me. I turned, and saw her holding Kaneki in a wrestling hold that took all the strength out of his limbs. He could only flail his head around and hope to bruise her ribs. It was kind of entertaining.

"... I give," Kaneki laughed, and Touka let him up. There was a lot of roughhousing in a group as inherently violent as ours.

"So we got a bunch of guns now," Touka turned her attention to me, "what's our next move?" I looked her in the eye.

"Money," I said simply, and she nodded.

"So how's that going to work?" she asked me, "you said that Karasuba was going to help us with money?"

"Partially," I gave a "so-so" motion with my hand, "MBI gives all Ashikabi a credit card with no limit but we can't fund a criminal empire with something as easily tracked as a credit card. Kara can help us with small-scale things like your clothes, and furniture and shit, but for us to really start being able to spend as much as we want, we need new ways to make money. What we really need is a hacker. We could steal a fuckton of money from a back or from MBI, but we'd be tracked down almost instantly with all the technology in the city. The only reason we could get away with stealing the weapons from MBI was because they didn't have cameras inside the vaults, and they put their faith into their guards. If we want to get a lot of money and spend it whenever we want, we need a way to cover up all the thefts and purchases, at least on a digital level."

"A hacker, hmm?" Karasuba mused thoughtfully. I felt her send a few memories of a red-head across our link. I made eye contact with her, and smiled demonically, a matching expression emerging on her face.

"Touka, Kaneki," I suddenly spoke, my tone serious, "get the others together in a couple of hours, we have a target to find."

"No problem," Kaneki nodded, Touka doing the same.

"MBI could never find someone of her skills, but who can hide from magic?" Karasuba cackled.

We let ourselves calm down for a few hours, there was no reason to rush. We'd just gone through one heist, and we could afford a few hours of relaxation between "missions" or whatever you wanted to call them. I spent my time sparring with Karasuba. I'd gotten good enough that when she limited herself to the physical abilities of a ghoul she didn't knock the blade out of my hands without effort. She could still kick my ass with little effort, but I was now firmly in the "beginner" stage, and no longer just an idiot swinging a pointy stick around. I was getting used to the balance of the Tsunagi, and my eyes were getting better at seeing Kara's movements. I could now see her as a vague blur flashing across my vision when she moved instead of not being able to see her at all. Karasuba was _very_ satisfied at the speed of my improvement.

A couple of hours after our weapons heist was over, everybody was gathered around the map of the city on the wall of the unused apartment.

"We're looking for the best hacker in existence, and I have complete faith when I say that," I informed the rag-tag group of ghouls plus one Seikirei, though Kara already knew everything I was about to say. "She's a brain-type Seikirei, so she can directly interface with technology within a certain radius. It's never been specific what that radius is, but considering that she used to directly link to _satellites in orbit_ , I'd say that there's nothing in the city that she can't hack into on a whim with nothing but her fucking mind. On top of her brain-type abilities, she's the 02 Seikirei, so technically speaking she has the second highest potential out of every Seikirei in existence. Her name is Matsu." A portrait of an attractive redhead with round glasses and a pair of braids flushed onto the wall next to the map, where I used a color-changing charm to replicate a memory of Kara's of Matsu's appearance. "She stole something called a Jinki from MBI, which are used for unknown purposes but are known to be extremely valuable. Even after we looted MBI's weapon caches, we're still off the radar compared to how much MBI wants her."

"And we're trying to recruit her… why?" Ayato scoffed, "It's not like MBI doesn't have cameras and sensors fucking everywhere, the moment she's spotted in any way the people she's with are going to be busted too."

"And yet MBI hasn't found her yet, have they?" I countered, a silence following my words.

"You mean that she's consciously keeping MBI's tech from finding her at all times?" Touka guessed, trying to wrap her head around the _terrifying_ possibilities of someone that could do that on command.

"Either that or she's in hiding," Kaneki mused.

"More likely the second," Karasuba spoke up, "Matsu sets the bar for a whole new level of intelligence, but she has a lazy and perverted streak that equals her IQ. It's a potent mix when she's motivated, but under normal circumstances she won't spend effort if it can at all be avoided."

"Karasuba's been missing from MBI for too long after getting winged, so by now MBI has probably wised up to her loyalties having changed. If she still had access to MBI then we could find MBI's network and find the places that it didn't cover, but unfortunately we're going to have to do it the hard way," I shook my head, "so basically we're going to have to scour the city for her, the old fashioned way. If you want to try and invent a tracking spell, that would be great, but the clock is ticking, and every second wasted is a second that might add up to MBI finding this place and ruining all our effort. At most we have another week. The good news is," I gestured to Ayato, "as dark bunny man here especially knows after dealing with Benitsubasa, Seikirei are especially tantalizing to ghoul senses. We'll be able to smell them from blocks away. If they're actually living somewhere, we'll be able to smell them from even farther. Everything about their physical form is saturated with magic, and our Rc cells will treat all that power like a heroin addict will a full needle. Once we start finding Seikirei, it will just be a matter of documenting who's where, and eventually we'll find them all. Whether she'll be the last we find, or not, will be up to luck."

"This… is going to suck. Badly," Touka groused. I shrugged helplessly.

"Shinichi you're forming a really bad habit of giving me shitty jobs," Nishiki sighed.

"NO SWEARING IN FRONT OF HINAMI!" Kaneki and Touka both screamed, making Nishiki jump out of his seat and go sprawling on the ground. Hinami just giggled.

"I never thought being so childish would be so entertaining," Karasuba commented just loud enough for me to hear, and I smiled.

I'd had a pretty fucking shitty life, right up until I'd found Anteiku. Or rather, until Anteiku found me. Now, I was wanted by every human government worldwide, I was living in a shithole, and I was becoming a criminal. Well, more than just a serial killer, anyway. But… I had a family, you know? Touka, Kaneki, Ayato, Nishiki, Hinami, Karasuba… they were there. Living in captivity the way I did made everything endlessly monotonous. Everything was the same, day in and day out, with mechanical regularity and a cold _sameness_ that took every trace of emotion out of it. The six people that I could honestly say I cared about… they kept me alive in more ways than one.

I would do whatever it took to make sure that I did the same for them, especially after I got them into the same bad situation that I created when I pissed off the humans and the CCG. Call me sappy, or sentimental. Shit, call me lame, but they were literally my only reasons to be alive that the moment.

Somewhere deep down I hoped that the 02 might be the next person to be one of those reasons, but I didn't want to hold my breath.

XXXXXXX

 _ **Chapter… 11!**_

 _ **I've officially gotten my first flame! OMG! I think this is some kind of milestone or something, but I got a good laugh out of it anyways. The guy gave me TWO reviews and lifted me in the rankings just so he could tell me my story sucked. Please, give me more hate. Raise my review count and help me climb the proverbial ladder.**_

 _ **Anyway, everything's soon going to shift from smaller-scale things into less "prologue-ish" stuff. Pretty much every chapter until now has been setting the stage, and within the next few more major developments will… develop.**_

 _ **I've decided that once I've completed this fic I'm going to go back and rewrite the earlier chapters so their less… info-dumpy, but that won't happen for a long while, probably for a good couple hundred thousand words or more. At least. This fic has been in planning for longer than it's been published, so I've got a lot of plot to cover, and I won't be abandoning this.**_

 _ **By the way, Carneval will become an actual organisation with ranks, and it will do all sorts of things like technology research, normal criminal stuff like thievery, smuggling, and the like, and lots of other things. However, I'm still deciding on what I'm going to CALL most of the crap that it's going to be made up off, so if you've got any ideas for names for ranks, divisions, or ideas for businesses that it should get into and things like that, then pop a review or a message because I appreciate the time-saver that that kind of help brings me. At this point I'd again like to give a shoutout to all the people that gave me ideas for Quinque, they'll show up faster than it might seem.**_


	14. Chapter 12: Carneval, Intermission

_**Hello everyone, I'm not dead yet!**_

 _ **First, I'd like to apologize that it took me so long to get this chapter out, I got some pretty bad burns on three fingertips of my left hand, so I couldn't type all that well for like 4-5 days because of the bandages. In repayment this chapters extra long. Ish. Kinda. Anyways here it is and thanks for all the reviews again! (100+ reviews! YAY!)**_

 **Chapter 12: Carneval, Intermission**

Now that we had actual physical possessions to our names and clear short-term goals, every member of Carneval was much busier than we were the week before. Or at least I wasn't just getting almost killed by Karasuba repeatedly as the others practised teleporting and shrinking items. Kaneki, Touka, Karasuba, and Ayato were primarily walking around the city. Whenever they got a whiff of magic, they'd track down the source and then document the Seikirei they'd found. Even if the Seikirei wasn't Matsu, it would be helpful to have hard copy dossiers of all of the beings that could possibly kill us if we gave them the chance. Seikirei are perfect servants, after all, and knowing all of their locations, skills, and habits might be more useful in the future than it was at the time.

Meanwhile, Hinami, Nishiki, and I were back at our apartments, working on separate projects. Hinami expressed a desire to learn to improve our living arrangements through magic. She'd made a shocking amount of progress, but then again she was a chimaera ghoul, and she was _very_ motivated. She wanted to be useful to us, but she was still too timid to be of use in an open conflict. So far, she'd created some kind of repairing spell that, and I'm guessing here, _reversed time_ on the target, returning it to an older and more perfect state. I'm not sure how many normal scientific laws that are completely ignored by such a feat, but she was doing it. It looked pretty power-intensive, however, because she never used it more than a few times in succession. She was also moving our furniture around and setting it up in the apartments so it looked like we actually lived there in a civilized manner. She put one of each of the beds in our rooms in our apartments, instead of having them all thrown in one room like we'd had them. She was getting no small amount of thanks from us for that. Nishiki was working in our storage cellar, and shit did he do well on it.

He had first burrowed straight down into the ground, compressing the dirt and rock outwards into durable walls. Once he'd gone down something like five stories he spread outward and made a space the size of an aircraft hangar. A hangar for the planes that airlines use, not the piddly two-person planes that normal people own. He'd taken all of the shrunken weapons and unshrunk them, and then started organizing them like they were when they were in MBI's hands.

Speaking of which, MBI went apeshit over the past few days. They knew better than to send agents after Karasuba, so they didn't actively do anything against us, but there were wanted posters for people in venetian carnival masks everywhere, with descriptions for each of our body types. Luckily we _did_ wear masks, so we can still go out in public without the public running in terror. After the fact, stealing almost all of MBI's weapons seems like a really easy way to piss them off really _really_ bad. Can't undo it now, but it brought a shitton of attention on us that we _really_ didn't need until we actually find Matsu and can cover our digital tracks.

We had about 40 of the 108 Seikirei located at the time, and we found 2-5 on average a day. Once we found over 10 in the same place, but they all were bonded to the same Ashikabi, so that doesn't count. Some Higa guy with an ego the size of Karasuba's swords skills.

I, on the other hand, was working heavily on my magic.

It was a simple problem of learning curve. Yes, I learned swordsmanship quickly, but my magical learning curve was just _faster._ And, it also gave me the opportunity to practice using something that my Kakuja allowed me to do. If anybody was watching me train in the bottom floor of our apartment, they'd see my humanoid body going through the motions of a sword form that Karasuba had told me to commit to memory in her absence, while my Kakuja stood several feet away, practicing my magic. It was hard to control two bodies simultaneously, but I could process all of the sensory information fine, and I only had my humanoid body endlessly repeating a bunch of the same motions, so I could divert the vast majority of my attention to my magical practice in through my Kakuja. Which, by the way, was only the size of a german shepherd instead of a tyrannosaur. The nature of a Kakuja is that you reshape your Kagune to be like whatever the fuck you wanted, and I wanted it to be smaller. Therefore, dog-sized Kakuja.

I wanted to pretend that I was a Seikirei. Karasuba had made it clear that the Seikirei were released into the city and all news traveling outside was screened so that no one would find out about the alien girls. If I could make the humans think that I was one of the weird aliens than no one would worry about me being a ghoul, and the CCG wouldn't come down on my ass. Yes, I probably could take them on on even terms, and outlast them in terms of stamina, but at some point the humans would cheat and use things like bombs, rockets, bombs, acid, bombs, missiles... did I mention bombs? So for the moment, I still wanted to stay incognito. Lots of things are easier when the general public doesn't know that you're a merciless killing machine with no inhibitions towards culling the human population generously.

Anyways, I knew that the most magical-like Seikirei were the ones that controlled an element. Therefore, I wanted to learn elemental manipulation. So far, I wasn't having much luck. I tried making fire, and I didn't even get sparks, no matter what I tried. It was kind of frustrating. My Ukaku looked like flames, some Manticores are supposed to be able to breathe fire, and yet I couldn't get a single spark. I tried controlling water and earth, and nothing. I tried controlling the air, and nothing. I tried metal, and I made it ripple, but nothing. It was infuriating. I wanted to be able to control an element, for the simple reason of psychological warfare. Sure, it would be freaky if I pointed my hand and someone and they died, but if I pointed my hand at someone and and fireball exploded around my target? It's a much more pronounced mental effect. That and my magic was my only advantage over Seikirei other than my minimal combat experience and I needed a way to use it without looking suspicious.

Because I wanted to be able to manipulate the element freely, I was keeping myself from using any kind of incantation. It pretty much amounted to me extending my magic outwards into the world and trying to move things around. I actually figured out how to use a crude form of telekinesis fairly quickly, by tagging the object with my magic and controlling its position relative to the earth and myself, but it wasn't really what I was after. Yeah, I could just telekinesis whatever I wanted to use, giving me fake elemental control by levitating the earth, water, and air. However to me that just seemed… inefficient. It was a division of intent and action, a separation between what I wanted to do and how I was able to do it, and that kind of separation cripples magical strength. Magical power is based off of belief, willpower, focus, etc, etc, and the more focused and precise your thoughts are the better the effect of the magic. Having a separation between what I wanted to do and how I faked it into happening would weaken my focus and hamstring my magical ability.

Then, a few hours into my first practice session, I found the element that I was aligned towards. Had an affinity for. It was just easier than any of the others.

I was in the training room on the ground floor of our apartments, teaching myself to use the element of lightning. Lightning isn't like the other elements in that it doesn't have any kind of physical presence. Even fire, which is a chemical process, still has an effect on pressure and has a physical affect on its surroundings. You can't bludgeon with lightning. You can't stab with lightning. You can't cut with lightning. Not directly, at least. What you can do with lightning is _burn_ whatever it comes into contact with. Lightning is several thousand times as hot as fire, and travels at the speed of light. So, I was trying to teach myself to emit electricity from my hands that I could use to burn whatever I touched. Eventually my whole body would emit lightning and the electricity would harm anyone that got too close for comfort. It was actually going fairly well.

I was standing far away from any metal, out in the middle of the concrete that made up the building. I looked at my hands, focusing and funneling magical power to my fingers. A faint purple aura was around my fingers from wasted magical power as tiny bolts of static flashed between them. I was teaching myself to direct the flow of electrons, imbuing them with magical power to give the lightning a magical aspect and make it not entirely physical, making it stronger and more controllable. I couldn't build up too strong of a charge quite yet, but that was partially because I didn't want to try throwing around lightning bolts until I was sure that I could actually control my lightning instead of just watching it vanish into the nearest metal piece as the current was grounded.

I was a little curious why my magic was purple. What was it that decided the colors of magic? Was it random? Was it decided by my soul? My personality?

But that was on the backburner. I was going over Kanou's medical knowledge as well, thinking about where I would need to hit a human with lightning for the blow to be lethal, or non-lethal depending on how long I wanted it to take the target to die. Sending a current through the heart was actually a bit more lethal than sending it through the brain, because a lot of the brain can die and still leave the human functioning, whereas the moment the heart stops a person is considered dead.

Once I was sure that I could negate the normal weaknesses of attacking with a bolt of lightning, I'd practice my aim. I wanted to be able to hit a man in the eye with a bolt of lightning from far enough away that even my eyesight started to get blurry. I could cook a man into a charred husk with lightning in a matter of moments if I channeled it through the right places on his body, and if my aim was good I could do it from far away as well. Perfect assassination. Apart from the giant flash of light and boom of thunder, but that doesn't count.

Nishiki popped up out of the armory, as we started to call it, and walked past me to head upstairs. He was as lazy as ever, even though he was somewhat motivated by the male love of weapons, so he took naps fairly often. Nobody bothered him for it because nobody else wanted to get stuck with the job of organizing everything. Nishiki, shockingly, didn't actually seem to be bothered by it all that much. He looked at my glowing lightning-y hands, and moved on, his tolerance for the supernatural pretty much having hit its peak. He was starting to mess around with water themed magic himself, mostly just to bring himself a drink without having to get up.

I had set up a cardboard box several feet away from myself. I extended my hand an inch and a hair thin streak of bright purple shot from my fingertip to the box with a loud snap/crack/static-y sound, like if static electricity had a baby with Zeus' thunderbolt and the child had self-esteem issues. It wasn't all that loud, but it didn't really sound like anything else and it would be distinctive if anyone heard it. Plus, it didn't have all that much power behind it yet. On the cardboard box was a dot-sized burn mark that was a few shades darker than the surrounding box. My static bolts weren't strong enough to even light the box on fire yet. Considering that I'd actually used the spell to hit an object 20 feet away exactly where I wanted without any kind of incantation was impressive as it was.

I had two main ideas for spells once I mastered generating lightning with magic. First, I wanted to be able to emit lightning from my hands in any shape, intensity, size, whatever. Imagine a fist made of lightning coming at your face and you get the reason why. Lightning has _always_ ALWAYS been a symbol of the gods' might in any religion in existence. It is the ultimate shock and awe weapon, and I wanted to be able to use it so well that Zeus himself wept with shame and envy. Second, I wanted to be able to form a layer of charged particles around myself. Not only would it create a magnetic field that might be able to protect me from metallic attacks like bullets and knives, but it would also electrocute any poor moron that tried to get too close. It was a defensive idea, but one that would hopefully make me virtually invincible to the CCG. Q bullets wouldn't hurt me at all with my level of regeneration, and if the doves wanted to take me on with Quinque then they'd have to get close enough for my Static Barrier to shock them, either through the air or through their Quinque. Living tissue is a great conductor for an electric current, after all, whether it's made of Rc cells or not.

As I practiced I thought about how to make Karasuba a ghoul. She had magic, so in theory if I implanted a Kakuhou into her or injected her with enough Rc cells she'd become a ghoul. The problem was, all of the Rc cells I had access to were either Quinque or from magical ghouls. Magical ghouls are linked to their own Rc cells so tightly that even if I transplanted them into Karasuba they'd still technically be the Rc cells of the donor, so the process wouldn't work. Quinque on the other hand… well… when kakuhou are made into Quinque, the organs are treated so that they're not truly "alive" anymore. They're just an organ, not the magical creation that they were originally. What that all meant was…

We would have to go back to Kakurega and find a normal ghoul to give its Kakuhou to Karasuba.

That was a lot of K words. Anyways, we weren't going ANYWHERE near that city for a while, so that project needed to be put onto the back burner.

Then I was interrupted from my thoughts by Nishiki _running_ down the stairs. Now Nishiki running under normal circumstances was strange in and of itself, but he also had a strangely determined and worried look on his face. He made eye contact with me, and he said something that made all of my plans and everything else get immediately set to the backburner.

"I know where Matsu is."

A half an hour later we were all in our meeting room, with Nishiki still looking strangely pale and twitchy, like he'd had the worst nightmare of his entire life.

"So where is she, and how do you know where she is?" I asked him finally, everyone in the room looking at him seriously.

"I… I had some kind of vision while I was asleep. I could feel my magic acting strangely during the whole thing so I know it was real," he defended himself when he saw Touka and Ayato about to call bullshit. "I saw Matsu hiding in a secret room inside an Inn in the north of the city. She was asleep too, mumbling in her sleep about her Ashikabi-sama."

"... shit," I cursed.

"She's already winged?" Ayato grimaced. It would be a lot harder for us to "acquire" her if she was already bonded.

"Are you really believing this idiot?" Touka objected.

"Touka, actually, I've had visions myself in the past. I actually saw Ayato hurting you minutes before it could've actually happened. I know there's myths of magic that can see into the future and things like that, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt," I shook my head, "Besides, even before Kara-chan started reacting to me I actually had a magical urge to go find her that led me to her at MBI tower. There's something strange going on between us and Seikirei."

"Ashikabi are known to have dreams of Seikirei that are reacting to them," Karasuba added.

"I thought she was already winged?" Ayato narrowed his eyebrows.

"Maybe, maybe not. The fact that Karasuba reacted to me when she was technically already winged is proof that we still might be able to re-wing her," I shrugged.

"So where is this place?" Touka asked, deciding to do as the rest of us were doing and trust Nishiki.

"There," Nishiki pointed and a small dot appeared near the top of our map on the wall. Huh, that was an impressive use of my color-changing charm. It wasn't better than I could use it, of course not, why would you think that?

"Alright," Ayato nodded, "we'll have to make sure to be armed too, who knows what kinds of defences she's got lying in wait around herself. You did mention that MBI is after her."

"Scorpion 1/56 should be all that we need. Anything riskier and we should be breaking out our Kagune anyways," I advised them.

"Alright," they all nodded, but didn't move. They had the knife Quinque hidden on themselves already, like the good ghouls they were.

"Let's go get ourselves a nerd," Touka grinned. Nishiki was strangely silent.

XXXXXXX

"There it is…" Ayato whispered quietly enough that only us ghouls and Seikirei could hear it.

"It doesn't look like a booby trapped fortress," Touka commented with an amused snort.

"It's only inhabited by a Seikirei that probably has the place bugged more than a fucking wasp nest with cameras and microphones," Karasuba snickered, making Touka glare at the swordswoman.

"Nishiki, go and scout it out, if I or Kara are seen then she'll panic," I instructed the lone Bikaku ghoul of our group, and he nodded. He was acting strangely compliant.

Nishiki jumped down the roof we were hiding on a few streets away from the building, heading closer on foot and on the sidewalk where he was in clear view and looked completely normal. Ayato pressed a button on his digital watch, marking the start of a 20 minute timer, how long we guessed it would take MBI to arrive after recognizing our thermal signatures. Nishiki had that much time before we busted in there and rescued him.

XXXXXXX

Nishiki arrived at the building, his lazy expression completely concealing his nervousness and the intimidation that the unassuming building forced on him. He inwardly scowled, annoyed that a ghoul of his caliber could be scared of a fucking _overglorified apartment building_. He stepped past the privacy fence, and knocked on the door. It took several minutes for someone to answer the door, but when it was opened by a demure woman in classical japanese apparel, he froze.

Nishiki was someone that had grown up in the most hostile environment known to humanity and ghoul alike, the hometown of the CCG and Aogiri Tree. Like all ghouls and veterans of combat, he had a sort of sixth sense for danger, and the moment he laid eyes on the meek looking woman every stray thought in his head was utter, mind-numbing terror. It didn't help that he could smell that _ludicrous_ amount of magic in the air wafting out of the building. There was so much concentrated magic in the building that it put even Zero and Karasuba to shame. Worst of all he recognized her from the descriptions that Karasuba had given all of the ghouls. This was Miya Asama, the 01 Seikirei, someone that could probably kill him ten different ways with a fucking grape. It was probably the most dangerous moment in his entire life up until then. That being said, it wasn't anything new to a ghoul like him, so his old habits of pretending and lying were ready to be put to use.

"Hello," he smiled, "I'm looking for a place to stay, would you be willing to give me a chance to stay here?" He kept a slightly pained and ashamed expression on his face so that it looked like he was thrown out of his old home. However, he kept his head high and his dignity intact, so he looked like someone that was responsible enough to pay rent and things like that.

"Of course," Miya smiled, "Come in, we still have one room left."

"We?" Nishiki raised an eyebrow curiously as he started to follow the extremely dangerous housewife into her lair.

"Oh yes, I have four other guests in my home," explained, "I'm sure you'll love to meet them. All of my tenants are encouraged to have a friendly relationship with each other." Nishiki would normally be fine with that but he was there to wing a Seikirei, forcefully if he had to, and the longer he spent in the building the greater the chance that he would say something out of place or show some flaw in his appearance that would indicate his subterfuge, inviting the wrath of the purple-haired-devil-woman down on him. He sniffed again, acting like he had the sniffles, trying to distinguish between the different smells. He smelled human food, something that smelled terrible but wasn't nauseating like it was before he was magical. He entered the main room of the building, and saw four people sitting around a table. One was a male with dark hair that looked no older than Ayato. The next was a girl in a shrine maiden outfit with a chest that put breast implants to shame. The next was a brown haired girl wearing a t-shirt with a star on its front, and last was a man Nishiki's age with ash-grey hair.

They all waved and said hello, but Nishiki was… distracted. One of the smells of magic in the air was slightly _different_ in a way the others were. While magic in general smelled something like the best flowers ever mixed with the ocean, bacon, cold mountain air, and all of the other amazing smells in the world all wrapped into one. However that particular brand of magic that he was smelling was… sweeter, more enticing than the rest of the magic in the room. He was dazed a little, feeling his magic pulse like a slow heartbeat at the scent.

"Are… you alright?" Miya asked, seeing Nishiki's eyes glaze over. The ghoul looked her in the eye and nodded unsteadily.

"Just… a little distracted," Nishiki told her, his gaze passing around the room without any real thought behind it. Nishiki's mind blanked out, all of his thoughts falling away. A loud thumping noise rushed down the stairs and all of a sudden a new person burst into the room and pounced.

The next thing Nishiki saw was his target's face pressed up against his in a kiss, with Matsu's wings glowing behind her. Around him the entire room was staring in shock, Miya and the ash-haired one especially. Then, Nishiki recognized the ash-haired Seikirei, the 06, and the shrine maiden one, number 88. And the last one with a star on her chest was number 10. He was completely surrounded by Seikirei that utterly _loathed_ Karasuba. Miya was glaring at Nishiki and Matsu, and Nishiki paled as he pulled away.

"Ashikabi-sama," Matsu sighed happily, leaning into Nishiki after pulling away from the kiss.

"Matsu…" Miya's face lost all trace of emotion, as a hannya mask seemed to… coalesce into existence behind her. "Such public displays of affection are prohibited in Maizon Izumo."

"... holy fucking hell there's two of you!" Nishiki gasped, staring at the hannya in shock. The reaction was so unlike anything that the residents of the inn had ever seen, and even Miya was surprised enough for the mask to fade.

"Two of me?" Miya repeated, too surprised to chastise Nishiki for his language. Nishiki put his arms around Matsu, feeling Matsu's… _generous_ bosom press onto his chest.

"Ah…" Nishiki stumbled, realizing that he'd slipped, "I've just seen someone else do that before." He offered, intentionally trying to be vague and explain what he'd said without giving away any real information.

"There's someone else that can do that?" Uzume wailed weakly.

"Yes, apparently there is," a new voice spoke up. The room whipped their heads around to see a newcomer in the room. He was sort, with spiky black hair only a few inches long that refused to stay in any kind of order, and resulting in an ebony black mess that actually looked good instead of just unkempt. His eyes were a dark magenta purple, and he had on a western style outfit with a black t-shirt with the kanji for "ghoul" in the center of its chest. Black jeans clad his legs, and he had flat-bottomed shoes on, also in black. He had a black leather belt around his waist, and a dark grey zippered hoodie over his t-shirt that was unzipped so that his shirt was visible. "And I should say…" he trailed off, a _huge_ snarling lion face fading into existence just behind him. It was easily six feet tall and it growled at them threateningly. " _Killing the mood is fucking prohibited."_

Uzume whimpered off to the side, muttering about how it was "worse coming from a little boy," among other things. Miya looked absolutely _floored_.

"Yes, Uzume, I already know that mine is bigger than hers," Zero smirked, his cocked eyebrow indicating that he knew the innuendo of that phrase. Miya and Matsu paled, but for entirely different reasons than the rest of the occupants of the room.

"YOU!" Miya's hand twitched towards her waist, where a sword would normally be, but she resorted to balling her hands into fists, which was a terrifying enough idea as it was.

"Wow, looks like I'm famous," Zero smiled, "but yeah, I'm not here to kill anybody, I just felt the bloodlust from Miya here and I was coming to pull my friend's ass out of the fire."

"Get out of my home!" Miya growled. Zero raised an eyebrow.

"Wow, you really hate Kara-chan, don't you?" Zero's tone was surprisingly understanding. "You know she did want to apologize to you, eventually. She's been different since she was winged, emotionally speaking. She still wants to get the power to beat you into the ground so she can be the strongest, but she doesn't obey MBI's orders any more, and she understands why you left MBI to be with Takehito." Miya faltered, caught between disbelief and a small sliver of hope.

"Kara-chan?" the number 88 Seikirei mouthed.

"Wait, you're _Karasuba's_ Ashikabi?" Uzume blurted.

".yeah," Zero shrugged. "So anyways, come on, Nishiki, we've got ten minutes before the MBI grunts realize where we are. Unless Matsu here can hack into their satellite imaging?" He looked to the redhead Seikirei.

"Um…" she stammered under the abnormally intimidating young boy. "I can't interface with the satellite, it's a new one and I can't sync with a new computer from too far away. I can hack into the digital communication network and call off the enforcers."

"If you weren't already taken I'd kiss you if you did that," Zero sighed. "And I don't mean I'd wing you, it's a human saying meant to convey gratitude," he added quickly before his figure of speech could be misinterpreted.

"... Done," Matsu declared after closing her eyes for a moment.

"Damn she's good," Zero complimented. Nishiki felt a small burst of pride across the fledgling link between him and his Seikirei.

"Matsu, you know what they are…" Miya cautioned, stepping closer to Nishiki and remaining in her battle stance, albeit somewhat more hesitant.

"What they are?" Kagari, or rather Homura, the Seikirei 06 questioned, leaning forwards.

"Ghouls," Matsu responded, grabbing onto Nishiki's shirt in her hands weakly. "But he's my Ashikabi-sama. You all know what that means…" The Seikirei all grimaced. So they didn't like the literal enslavement of loyalty that a Seikirei bond created, and they were terrified of being enslaved to someone that killed humans every so often without remorse.

"We don't eat humans," Zero shook his head, "well, not normally. We're a subspecies of ghoul, you could say, and we don't have the same biological needs."

"Oh," they blinked in surprise, though they didn't immediately believe what Zero was saying.

"Yeah, anyways, now that I know that Miya-chan here isn't going to beat you into a paste, I'll let you get acquainted with Matsu. The two of you'll need to be back home by sundown, I'll have… I'll try and get as much electronic equipment as I can," Zero nodded, and then without another word, he seemed to shrink into himself and vanish with a mellow pop.

"... He's gotten a lot better at that recently," Nishiki observed, trying to break the silence. "Come on, let me show you my place, we do honestly need your help." Nishiki looked Matsu in the eye. Matsu looked to the other Seikirei in the room with an apologetic expression. Nishiki stood up straight, his hands around Matsu's waist. "I apologize for causing a disturbance in your home," Nishiki bowed to Miya as much as he could while holding Matsu to him. Normally he wouldn't care about offending anyone, but Miya was the Tokyo equivalent of Kishou Arima, the unbeatable titan that was willing to attack viciously and decisively when needed. On top of that Carneval was acting out against MBI directly, and any ally against the mega-corporation was welcome. Nishiki stood up, and had to spin a bit before he teleported away as well, leaving the Izumo Inn in a shocked and somewhat fearful silence.

XXXXXXX

"Karasuba, she'll be here in a bit," I told my Seikirei after I teleported her with me back to our apartment complex. "Nishiki winged her, but I'd guess that it'll be a few minutes before he has a chance to come back." I was proved wrong momentarily as Nishiki popped into the open first floor of our apartments with a loud crack that I'd only recently managed to get rid of myself. Matsu heaved, her biology rejecting the squeezing, breathless experience that magical teleporting was, but she seemed to have a strong stomach because she kept her lunch.

"What was that?" she whimpered, her eyes wide. She looked curious, but she was holding her curiosity in check due to the fact that she was in the room with a known psychotic killer and the person that was effectively her soul mate.

"Magical teleportation," Nishiki took the initiative to explain. I nodded, satisfied that Nishiki was going to take responsibility for the soul he'd bound to himself.

"Magic?" Matsu breathed. Then the realization that apparently _magic was real_ , and she fainted.

"Well, that was dignified," Karasuba snickered. The corner of my mouth twitched upwards in amusement.

"Come on, Kara-chan, I'm in the mood for a spar," I took my very own serial killer by the hand and led her to the scarred part of the building that had several blade slash marks along the ceiling and floor like a kid pulling his older sister through a toy store. I reached into my hoodie and pulled a small object from the place opposite the pocket on my left side, where I'd sewn in an extra pocket to hold my Quinque. This time, however, I wasn't holding a Tsunagi. I pulled the marble-like object out of my pocket. It was jet black with miniscule red lines tracing vein patterns across its entire surface. It was about the size of an apple, or an orange, and it fit into the palm of my hand perfectly. I sent a little bit of magic through it, and it responded, expanding and forming into the shape of the most feared Quinque in ghoul history, IXA. It's handle was bent slightly, so I held it up in a fencing stance while Karasuba switched to an Iaido stance. Once I'd had the basics of kenjutsu down, Karasuba insisted that I start learning fencing as well. She reasoned that if I only focused on one, then I'd create all of my muscle memory along one pattern, and it would make learning fencing harder. I trusted her, so I'd learning the basics of fencing as well. In our spars I'd started using the base form of IXA to practice both kenjutsu and fencing, and sometimes using them in conjunction. Really the biggest difference was that fencing was primarily thrusting attacks and parries, while kenjutsu was slashes and parries, so they didn't clash and overlap on each other's territory when I tried to use them both. This actually made it easier to blend them together.

Karasuba lunged forward, swinging her blade in a blindingly fast upward draw slash, and I responded by tilting IXA to the side, letting her blade clash along it and harmlessly to my side. Taking a physical attack from a physical-type Seikirei was suicide, so I deflected it with fencing. I countered by stabbing forward with IXA, my forward foot charging with me and my back leg extending to give me the maximum leverage and reach. Kara turned and twisted slightly to dodge, allowing it to pass by her with a few inches to spare, and she threw her steel-toed and high-heeled right boot at my face. Yes, we were having a sword-fighting spar, but I've said it before. Karasuba is a sexy, devious, cruel, sadistic little bitch and she refused to handicap herself, because no one in real combat would do so either. And because she enjoyed inflicting violence on poor little me.

Karasuba's foot hit my in the face and my neck snapped backwards sickeningly. Instead of going limp, I swung IXA towards her hamstrings, which would immobilize her. My neck healed as she gracefully backflipped out of my reach and stabbed forward with her blade. I used a fencing parry again, but I didn't have the time to return an attack before her blade was slicing for my neck again. In our spars if I managed to touch her with my blade it was considered my victory, and if she inflicted a fatal wound ten times she won. It was a fair set of rules, with the difference in skill we had.

I managed to block and dodge together, avoiding the slash by a hairsbreadth.

The next several minutes were more of the same situation, with the two of us just enjoying the adrenaline rush of combat with the intent to cause fatal damage. This was our way of going on dates, and having romantic picnics in the sunset. My blood splattered through the air, our muscles burned, our limbs whipped around as we clashed blades over and over again. Finally my frustration reached a critical point, and I threw IXA to the side, my Rinkaku sprouting from my back in all of its glory, five bladed limbs stabbing towards her. Immediately, her speed shot up a level, and our combat accelerated to a new level. Now every swing of her sword was serious, and intending to hit a fatal area. I blocked her Tsunagi as best as I could with my Rinkaku, but mostly I tried to dodge. About half of the time my dodge failed and I took a fatal injury, but I barely even registered the pain. Karasuba was covered in my blood from the times that she opened an artery. My five Kagune limbs struck towards her like a rabid hydra of blades, but Karasuba's combat ability was absolute. She deflected _two_ with one parry, twisted around two more. _Stepped on top_ of the fifth, and then stabbed her sword between my eyes. I heard a gasp behind me. Matsu must have woken up, she's the only person that would be surprised by the sight, even if Matsu already knew that I could survive it from the footage of the time that I winged Karasuba.

My Kagune retracted into my back, and I took the handle of her sword out of her hand. I brutally ripped it out the side of my head, not bothered by the damage to my brain in the slightest, before it was healed completely, and then I jumped at Karasuba, lips crashing together frantically.

"... Are they always like that?" Matsu asked Nishiki weakly.

"Yeah, pretty much," Nishiki shrugged. Matsu laughed cynically.

"They're perfect for each other," Matsu observed… not _jealous_ exactly, but longingly, wanting that kind of closeness and acceptance.

XXXXXXX

"Matsu," Nishiki felt her emotions across their link, "You are my Seikirei, and there are a lot of things you need to know before you understand what that means for you. Come with me, let's get to know each other." Nishiki took her by the hand and led her upstairs, ignoring the Seikirei and Ashikabi that were rolling on the floor with their tongues down each other's throat, fighting for dominance even then. Karasuba's wings were glowing behind her, twisted demonic fairy wings of light that didn't have a real physical presence so when Karasuba had her back to the ground her wings seemed to vanish as they phased into the solid floor.

Nishiki led Matsu up a pair of stairways, and then through a hallway, ending up in Nishiki's apartment. It was colored with the colors of nature, in deep blues, greens, and browns. He had started to try and paint a forest onto the wall using the color-changing charm, but he wasn't precise enough with it yet to bring the level of detail past an impressionistic depiction. Matsu was… _surprised_ to see such a tranquil looking home for something like Nishiki.

"So, you know I'm a ghoul, right?" Nishiki asked, plopping down on one of the few giant bean bag chairs in the room. Nishiki liked to be lazy so he went out and found them himself. Matsu sat down stiffly on another after a moment of hesitance.

"Yes," Matsu nodded, her mood somber.

"Alright, and I'm assuming that you know what ghouls are and the basics of their biology. Now in our case, several of those rules about our biology are thrown straight out the window," Nishiki announced. Matsu tilted her head in confusion. "First of all," Nishiki lifted his hand with one finger extended, "we don't need to eat humans to survive. In fact we don't need to eat or breathe at all."

"What?" Matsu shouted, "that isn't possible! All living things need to consume nutrients to live!" Matsu's eyes teared up as she assumed that her Ashikabi was lying to her.

"Yes, normally, but you see Matsu the normal rules of science don't exactly apply to us either," Nishiki sighed, his hand flopping down to the bean bag chair, his head falling backwards as well. "We are magical. We have a magical core that produces a steady amount of magical power over time, and all we need to survive is that magical power. Nothing else."

"... magical?" Matsu was skeptical, but hopeful that her Ashikabi was being truthful. She hoped that he wasn't going to use her like a tool and try to keep her satisfied with lies. Nishiki lifted up a hand and above his palm the moisture in the air condensed into a perfect sphere the size of a grape. Matsu gasped.

"Seikirei are creatures of magic themselves," Nishiki told the redhead, "after seeing people control the elements and psychically control technology is magic that hard to believe in?" Matsu shook her head. "Alright. Secondly, because we're ghouls with magical cores, our regenerative abilities are in an entirely new league compared to other ghouls. Unless our entire body is destroyed down to the last cell we are capable of eventually healing without a scratch or scar. And on top of this, our regeneration combats aging with equal success. I am effectively immortal in terms of aging." Matsu took a second to take the new information in.

"So you will outlive me?" Matsu concluded weakly. She'd prepared herself all her life to lose her Ashikabi to old age while she still looked young and healthy. Except her Ashikabi would end up mourning her for all of eternity…

"No," Nishiki shook his head, "none of us will allow that to happen. You probably don't know it but our souls are bonded to each other on a fundamental level. It would be devastating if I lost you, especially because our bond is stronger than normal because I have a real magical core. Zero and I are trying to find a way to make our Seikirei ghouls, so that they have the same immortality that we do." Matsu simply stared, overwhelmed.

"Also…" Nishiki trailed off uncomfortably, "I've got a human girlfriend in Kakurega that saved my life. She will die of old age eventually, but until then I want to repay that debt to her, so you're going to have to wait a few years before I can be just yours." Matsu's eyes teared up. Not because she was sad that she had to share, Seikirei were by nature polygamists, but because she was realizing that she had an Ashikabi that kept his word and repaid his debts honorably, if nothing else. When she'd realized that she'd winged to a ghoul, she'd been terrified that she'd be used in… unsavory ways before being eaten. Now… now she had hope that she really did find her Destined One.

Nishiki gave Matsu the bed the first night, while he slept on his bean bags.

XXXXXXX

 _ **And there it is!**_

 _ **If anybody's confused about how they got away with basically stealing Matsu right under Miya's nose, even though Miya knew Zero and Nishiki were ghouls, my reasoning is simple.**_

 _ **Miya knew that Zero was Karasuba's Ashikabi and that he was a ghoul, so she assumed that he'd be even more of a psychotic killer than her. Faced with two people that not only were completely non-threatening, but POLITE, she was completely caught off-guard and because of that hesitated. Basically she was naive. If she'd acted more decisively and insisted that Matsu stayed at Izumo then things could've been different, but combined with the sight of seeing Zero teleport right in front of her, her ability to act decisively was completely stunted.**_

 _ **Now, time to get to work on writing the creation of Carneval in all its real glory!**_


	15. Chapter 13: Carneval, Second Act

**Chapter 13: Carneval, Second Act**

It's official. I provisionally agree with Karasuba's desire to slaughter the entire population of the world. I'd made a plan. A flawless plan. I then went out and found all of the homeless young idiots that would let themselves be drafted into a gang, and then I told them the plan. Then, I took them to an electronics store so we could get the things that Matsu needed to put her abilities to use. Then, the _morons_ fucked up the plan so badly that I had to kill them to the last man just to satisfy my frustration. They tried to make off with the electronics. _They tried to fucking steal from ME_. From me, an SSS class ghoul with the ability to kick physics and chemistry into a dark corner and fuck with reality with nothing but my god damn _mind_. Like I said, morons.

In any case my plan to find recruits had utterly failed. Why was it so hard to find capable people that were willing to go along with crime? It's not like I was just taking the scum of the earth off of the streets… actually that was exactly what I was doing but that's not important.

Anyways, Matsu now had an apartment in our "main base," for lack of a better name, filled with computers, monitors, and all other kinds of electronic equipment. She'd gotten started immediately at creating a reference database for us on MBI and all of the Seikirei. She had initiative, and I appreciated that. One of the first things that she'd done was to plant a program into MBI's surveillance systems to ignore our location. It was how she'd stayed safe at Izumo Inn, not just because she was under Miya's protection. The sattelites and cameras and sensors would ignore all data that was collected within our apartment, and above and below it so that we could go to the building's roof and enjoy the weather without having a private army come down on us like the wrath of the gods.

I was sitting next to Matsu as she worked. It was… surreal, actually. She had a sort of psychic bond to all of the electronics in the room. She still typed and used the mouse from a few of the computers, but the rest of the equipment seemed to be doing things by themselves. Matsu herself was facing towards the monitors, but her eyes were glazed over. Her mind was interpreting the data sent to the computer screens directly, instead of having to see it in front of her. Nishiki was on the other side of her, watching it happen with a much more impressed look than I allowed myself to have.

Karasuba was out, doing god knows what, probably either terrorising the innocent or snarking at MBI. I could feel her amusement across our bond, so whatever she was doing she was enjoying herself.

"We need a place to house our minions," I spoke up seriously, pulling the others attention to myself. "I don't think we'll be able to hold onto anybody's loyalty until we can actually hide them from MBI and keep them armed and paid and fed and all that."

"Accessing real estate records," Matsu intoned, one of her screens flashing with MBI logos and lists of property for sale. Right, MBI owned the city, so any property that wasn't privately owned belonged to MBI. "Prime candidate found," Matsu turned to me. "Location: 3rd ward, price: 432 million yen, an old hotel with two auditoriums and an underground parking garage. There is space for a third auditorium, but it was repurposed into a storage room. Number of rooms: 384, Number of floors: eight, including the parking garage. All access into the building must pass through either the front lobby or a lobby for the parking garage. The walls were constructed from cinder blocks with an outside layer for appearance. Reason for such construction unknown. Cinder blocks will most likely provide increased resistance to structural damage. All aspects are perfect for housing a criminal organization." She glanced at us with a bit of an unpleasant expression on her face. "Transferring ownership... done." She looked us in the eye.

"... Holy shit you work quickly," my mask of mostly-indifference utterly shattered.

"Being able to psychically control all forms of electronics is the biggest cheat ability in the modern world I've ever seen," Nishiki shrugged, his real amount of admiration flowing across his link to Matsu, so she wasn't upset at her Ashikabi's lack of a big physical reaction.

"You should probably stop trying to recruit people off of the streets as well," Matsu held up a hand before I could respond, "yes, they are perfectly willing to go along with your commands at first, but they don't have any skills or abilities outside of the absolute extreme of grunt labor. If you want your organization to be successful you need skilled subordinates that can do their jobs _without_ you as well as they could _with_ you." I sighed, slumping backwards. Matsu was right. As much as she didn't like the fact that we wanted to create a criminal empire, she was eagerly doing everything she could to help her Ashikabi, and that included doing everything she could to make Carneval the most successful that it could possibly be.

"Alright," I conceded, "so where do you think that I should go for recruits?" Matsu grimaced.

"After MBI bought the city, they killed off all of the organised crime groups, but didn't get rid of their front businesses like brothels. There's been a bit of small turf wars, so obviously someone else has tried to take the reigns, but if you earn the loyalty of the people there they'll be everything you need and more," Matsu' computers flashed with a bunch of new articles about deaths by "unknown" causes and missing persons reports, as well as satellite images that showed gunfights in several seedy parts of the city.

"That seems a little too easy…"

"Well, first you'll have to get near enough to speak with them without them either trying to kill you or running away in fear. And then you'll have to earn their loyalty somehow."

"You mean either butter them up with money or scare them into submission."

"... that's not exactly what I was suggesting."

"Matsu, these people are criminals. The only way you can get their loyalty is through profit or fear. Either they have to be terrified of crossing you, or it has to be more profitable to stay loyal than it would be to double cross us."

"... do you really need to do this?" Matsu asked, looking at Nishiki mournfully.

"Matsu…" Nishiki sighed, and then pulled the surprised redhead into a hug. "I know that you want to stay away from crime and that you have the right kind of morals, but remember what human society has done for us. Both ghouls and Seikirei constantly live with the threat of death over their heads, and the only way for us to survive would be to break law after law and slaughter enough people until those trying to rule over us realized that they can't. And to be completely honest, in my opinion killing someone is a mercy." Matsu blinked looking up at Nishiki in confusion. "For a normal human being alive is a miserable experience. You go through every day just lowering your head and desperately trying to earn enough money to stay alive, and only occasionally doing something that you somewhat enjoy, and at the end of it all they still die, and every way of dying is a bad way to go, whether you're tortured by injury or disease, or if you have to suffer through old age. Killing them releases them from their suffering."

"I… I don't know if I agree with that," Matsu held on to her Destined One weakly.

"I'm not asking you to follow my words blindly," Nishiki shook his head, "But I do want you to understand the reasons behind my actions so you don't feel any guilt or anything like that."

"...Wow, who knew Nishiki could be so mature?" I said out loud accidentally. Nishiki growled.

"Shut the fuck up, brat," he glared at me, his Kakugan blazing. I chuckled sheepishly. Right then I got a memory package from across my link to Karasuba. It was something that we'd learned to do. We could take sections of our memories and send them across our link to communicate things at extreme speeds without wasting the time it took to form words. I fell over backwards, roaring with laughter.

"... what the hell?" Nishiki commented, watching as I gasped for air in my mirth, not that I actually needed to breathe, but that was how my reflexes worked.

"Karasuba took a trip back to MBI," I explained. The others looked at me, completely confused. "She went to the barracks of their little military thing, and straight out asked if any of them wanted to work for her Ashikabi over MBI." There were a few of them that screamed and insulted either me or her. They couldn't scream or insult anybody ever again. "We've got a few hundred guys that are crazy enough to work under someone like Karasuba, but have enough of a grudge against MBI to risk it's anger." I sent a memory packet of my own to Karasuba. "And now they have the location of our new base. Time to get out of this shithole." I stood up, and teleported, making a sound so faint that a human would have a hard time hearing it even right next to me. I popped back into reality next to Karasuba, scaring the shit out of the collection of fully equipped MBI grunts that she was leading. A few of them actually opened fire, ripped holes into my torso. The bullets were mundane metal, so they couldn't pierce my skin, but they did shatter my bones for a few moments. Karasuba gave the men a pleasant grin, and they cowered in terror.

"So, this is them?" I looked the humans over. There were about a hundred of them, all wearing MBI combat equipment with standard armaments. Their uniforms were black with grey accents, though the colors were varied in an urban camo design. The MBI logo was on their shoulders, left chest, and back. You know, in case you didn't already know that they worked for MBI. They were walking casually, but they were still in a squarish group with orderly lines and ranks. They were trained to the point that staying in formation was instinctive and automatic, not something that they even needed to think about. They were eyeing me with an extreme amount of nervousness for a handful of reasons, the biggest of which was the fact that I was _Karasuba's_ Ashikabi and they'd just seen me take a barrage of assault rifle rounds without any visible injury. The only sign that I'd been hit was the holes in my clothing, and all it took me to solve that was a quick pulse of magic, using the spell that I'd reluctantly learned from the others. It selectively reversed time to revert my clothing to its previous condition, erasing the damage from existence. It was one of the many ways that I got to take science and beat it into submission with nothing but my own power.

"All of them have some kind of grudge against MBI," Kara shrugged, "Some of them had families rejected medical care, some just hate their rules. All of them just didn't have a reason to stay." The humans shifted nervously, not sure how I would react to such a show of disloyalty. I just looked them over.

"Alright, let's keep going, we've got more than enough space for them all now," I nodded, flashing the pictures of the ex-hotel I now owned across my link with Karasuba. She sent me a flicker of amusement. I fell into step next to Karasuba, the humans following me. My phone pinged, and I knew that it was Matsu telling me that she was keeping MBI's surveillance from tracking us. They were only a few blocks from the hotel when I got there, so it only took us a few minutes for us to arrive. It was an impressive building, but it looked… aged. Not as bad as our apartment building, but it wasn't well taken care of. I was planning on waiting until night time, and giving it a repair-color change refurbishing when there wasn't enough light for people to see my magic in action. I may have no problem using my abilities in public, and my face was everywhere after Karasuba publicly exploded my head just before winging me, but MBI would trace the building to me instantly if they started seeing things happen that they couldn't explain.

Kara unlocked the door by stabbing it. We were already going to replace the locks with something better, so it was a fun way of getting into the building without a key. The lobby was in good condition, but it was covered in dust and some of the wall and ceiling were starting to fall apart. All of the humans came in behind us, looking over the building skeptically. I reached over and pulled Kara into a kiss, our bond surging as magical power flowed between us. I pulled away from her, and focused my power, my Kakugan activating and glowing like twin flashlights as I channelled a massive amount of power from both myself and Karasuba.

" **Overmend"**

The building shuddered as it was cast backwards through time. Around us, the room seemed to be played on fast forward in reverse. The pieces of the walls and ceiling that had fallen out of place flew back into position, matter appearing from nothing to fill the gaps and leave unmarked material behind. Colors reversed to their vibrant selves, all of the dust and discoloration of age vanishing to fuel the repairs. In a matter of several seconds the room looked like it was just constructed days before, in utterly spotless condition. The rest of the building was no different. I gasped, and fell to one knee, my magical core throbbing from using that much magic all at once. It was more than half over my maximum capacity for mana, and it all had to pass through my magical core as it flowed from Karasuba across our bond. It was worth the pain, however, because I wasn't just giving us a nicer place to live. I was making a statement to our audience. They weren't dealing with a ghoul. They weren't dealing with a man. They weren't dealing with a rich madman with too much power in his hands. They were dealing with someone that could literally erase them from existence on a whim. Well, not really, but that's what they would assume. I couldn't do that quite yet, I hadn't figured out the trick for it.

"You all can take the rooms on the lowest floor of the normal rooms," I told the men, my normal breath returning. "The top floor belongs to us. All rooms below the top floor are identical, so just choose one and stick with it." The men nodded, somewhat put off by the fact that I'd had them on the bottom floor. I'd make up a reason for it sometime, but in reality I just put them on the first floor that came to mind. The first floor, you know? The ex-MBI workers all filed towards the stairwells. It'd take way longer for them to take the elevator, and they knew that, so they took the fastest way up. I was seriously liking the way the guys were trained. Me and Kara went to the elevators, and took them up to the top floor.

The top floor of the place was one huge penthouse. It must've originally been for some business tycoon, because it had a full kitchen, living rooms, multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, offices, everything. It was like a mansion several floors up. And of course it was surrounded by windows so you could always see out into the city. I didn't know why a building so far into Tokyo was sitting empty, but it was absolutely perfect for us. I took Kara-chan by the hand, and teleported to our old safe house, so we could get all of our stuff.

XXXXXXX

"This is nice," Touka grinned, looking over the foyer of the penthouse, a fully packed duffel bag in each hand. The foyer doubled as an entry hall and a lounge, and it was large enough that we could've fit a couple of swimming pools in it if we wanted to. It was the kind of place for rich people to party, "mingle," and sit around smoking cuban cigars and drinking champagne. For us, it could be the place that we hung out, relaxed, and lived. Our "common room," so to speak. The reinforced glass roof was a nice touch. It was a cloudy day, but during thunderstorms and clear days we'd have a stunning view of the weather. I was thinking about placing an observatory deck above us for just that purpose, and maybe to keep an eye on the city, too. It still had a few luxurious chairs sitting around, and a few tables. One wall had a bar, which I knew we were immediately going to stock with coffee ingredients. Anteiku habits die hard.

Nishiki was lounging on a leather chair, leaning backwards with Matsu on his lap and in his arms. Ayato and Kaneki were exploring the place, mapping it out in their heads like the paranoid survivors they were. The rest of us did the same, but more subtly. Hina-chan had already picked out a room, and was putting her clothes into the closet, humming some song to herself with Narukami's case on her bed. Which reminded me.

"Hey, Hina-chan, would you mind if we gave Narukami to Matsu?" I called to her, making her pause in her unpacking.

"Not at all!" she called back, perfectly polite. She'd never felt any kind of attachment to the Quinque, and if she was attached to Narukami I wouldn't have asked her to give it up anyways. It was a suspiciously fitting weapon for the technologically-oriented Matsu to wield a Quinque that could hurl lightning blasts. Hinami tossed the case down the hall with the force of a major league baseball pitch, and I Touka dropped her duffel bags to catch it nimbly out of the air, and redirect it to Nishiki and Matsu. Matsu caught it as well, but with slightly less grace than Touka. Matsu was a brain-type Seikirei, the least physically able kind of Seikirei, so her body was just a bit less capable than ours. She was still stronger than any human could ever hope to be, but us S-class ghouls were all more powerful than her. And elemental-type Seikirei could outclass us in strength without discussion, much less physical-type Seikirei, but Matsu was at a disadvantage. She made up with it in the fact that she could probably drop a rain of nukes on us in a matter of minutes, but in a straight up fight she didn't stand a chance. Then again, there's really no such thing as a straight up fight.

I turned away from the redheaded Seikirei looking over her new weapon, and walked towards the master bedroom of the penthouse. It had a king-sized bed and it was on the corner of the building so two of its walls were glass. The industrial kind made to weather the weather, not the glass that breaks easily if the wind blows too hard. From the bed I had a view out towards the ocean and downtown Tokyo, and to the east towards the greater part of the city. Whoever designed the building wanted the master bedroom to have an unimpeded view of the glory of the city. It had a desk with a leather chair and all the equipment for a private office. From the room I could see basically all of the inner city, and keep a direct eye on MBI itself. The giant tower in the middle of the city was kind of hard to miss. It was pretty much the center of attention any time you looked out.

Karasuba followed me into the room, tossing her collection of blades onto the bed in a duffel bag, shrunk down to fit. Yeah, she had that many blades.

"This is cozy," she said to me, coming to stand behind me as I looked out the window, placing her arms around my neck and holding me to her. My head was now up to her shoulders, so her chin fit over my head perfectly. I could feel her warmth through the back of my shirt. That close the smell of blood that clung to her from all of her kills was obvious, but to a ghoul it wasn't all that bothersome. It was actually kind of attractive, like wearing expensive perfume, because my sense of smell worked differently from humans.

"I've been thinking about how to make you into a ghoul," I started, reaching up to hold her hand and run my thumb across her fingers gently. I breathed, and caught another whiff of the stench of blood that followed her.

"Oh?" she asked, adjusting her chin on top of my head.

"How'd you like to make a trip to the bloodiest place on the planet?" I offered with a smirk.

"You know how to pamper a girl," Karasuba cooed, already knowing where I was going with it.

"I'd also like to see how many ghouls that I can recruit to work for Carneval. They can't be harmed by normal human weapons, so it's not like they have anything to lose," I shrugged, shifting her arms around me.

"You'd trust them?" she questioned.

"No," I chuckled, "but there's some that I would. Ghouls are willing to stay loyal to anything and anyone as long as they can be fed and safe by the thing they're loyal to. If I can give them a steady supply of human flesh and a safe place to live, then they won't ever betray me."

"Holding the only way to stay alive is an easy way to keep people's loyalty," Kara mused.

"You have any experience with that?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Ha, no," she laughed, "usually the only way they can stay alive is to stay far, far away from me."

"I'm not sure if that will work with them, though," I squeezed her hand affectionately, the both of us basking in the raw emotion flowing both ways across our bond.

"And you're going to use one of them to make me into a ghoul?" she asked me.

"After a few experiments, of course. I'll have to grab one of the Seikirei and test out the implantation to make sure that it actually works," I cautioned her, "once I'm sure that it won't kill you or something like that you'll be one of us." We drifted into a comfortable silence.

"... you know sometimes I wonder what my Kagune will be like," she told me.

"Knowing you it'll probably be something that can draw the most blood," I mused.

"Yeah, that does sound like me," she agreed.

"Hmm," I hummed, leaning my head back against her. She chuckled as my head settled between two soft mounds. I squeezed her hand one last time, and pulled away from her, moving to open my own duffel bag. I pulled my clothes and possessions out of my bag and stuffing them into the dresser against the wall. I didn't have all that many so it didn't take me all that long. Karasuba started taking her collection out of her duffel bag, along with her clothes, though those were at the bottom and weren't as important to her. She started laying the many swords and daggers and knives in organized rows on the bed. I started taking my own weapons out of my bag. IXA, a few handguns, rifles, and shotguns, a few combat knives, and my own much smaller collection of blades.

When I had all of my clothes put away I started on Karasuba's, but not before returning both of our weapon collections to normal size with a wave of my hand. She stabbed the lowest quality weapons into the wall, and using those weapons as racks for the others. It was a surprisingly nice aesthetic, and she wasn't even trying. Kind of like a ninja/samurai/shogun kind of thing. She did the same with mine when she finished with hers. In the end we had all of our clothes put away, and the walls were covered in shiny implements of murder.

"So when do you want to go?" I asked her.

"No time like the present," she responded.

"Yeah, it's not like we don't go do everything spontaneously," I sighed.

"We're going to have the best honeymoon ever," she giggled. I froze.

"Honeymoon?" I repeated, realizing that that was exactly what it was, in a strange, twisted way. I was more preoccupied with the fact that Karasuba, fucking _Karasuba_ , had giggled like a lovesick highschool girl. I vanished from the room with a pop, intending on coming back when the world made sense again.

XXXXXXX

"You're going back to that shithole?" Ayato raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," I nodded, "I'm going to get a few ghouls to try and see if Seikirei can survive ghoulification, and then I'm going to see how Yoshimura and the others are doing. After that, I'll go looking for ghouls to recruit for Carneval." I looked to Nishiki. "And I know that you're coming with me no matter what. Go look for Kimi, and make sure that you're not caught." Nishiki nodded thankfully. "Keep an eye on the new recruits, try and whip them into shape and get them started on building a presence. Matsu mentioned that there's a few brothels that we might be able to work with."

"Understood," Matsu nodded.

"Kaneki, try and see if you can find a few Seikirei that we could use as tests for ghoulification," I delegated. Kaneki nodded.

"Then let's go," I took Karasuba by the hand and teleported with a noticeable crack. I had a harder time with teleporting when I was taking someone with me. Nishiki followed, teleporting to the arrival point that we'd discussed. We arrived in one of the alleys in the 20th ward. Luckily for us, it was empty so we didn't have to waste time making anything disappear.

"Huh," Kara looked around us, "it's not all that different…" I realized that this was the first city she'd been in other than Tokyo. I sent her a feeling of reassurance empathically, and then pulled a satellite phone from my pocket.

"Alright, Matsu, we're here. What can you tell us from the satellite imaging?" I asked. On the other end, Matsu's voice carried to me, crackling from distortions in the signal. It was wonderful having the ultimate set of eyes in the sky. She might not have a direct link to a satellite anymore, but that didn't mean she couldn't hack into one.

"It doesn't look all that different from what you said the distribution was like before you left, there's just less. A lot less. Going by the thermal imaging there's less than half the number of ghouls in the city as there used to be," Matsu observed cautiously. "There's an abnormal gathering of elevated heat signatures in the 11th ward, it's probably exactly what you're looking for."

"They haven't even moved?" Nishiki raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, no, moving would admit that they've been threatened, and Aogiri Tree could never admit that," I sighed sarcastically. "Let's just hope that we can steal a few of them without the whole city realizing we're here."

"Yes, like you're all that inconspicuous with masks," Matsu grumbled. We were wearing our Carneval masks, because the city knew my face.

"We're cosplayers," I explained to the CCG investigator that had stopped us. He was some newbie, without a Quinque even, and he saw three people with masks and stopped us because we looked like ghouls.

"Cosplayers," he repeated skeptically. The guy was the classic nobody, short brown hair and brown eyes, not ugly, not too tall, basically he was everything that meant "not memorable." I nodded enthusiastically.

"There's a convention where people act out famous fights between ghouls and the CCG. I'm Chimaera, I get to fight Arima!" I gushed convincingly. The man looked slightly unnerved by the fact that I was a kid happy about pretending to be an infamous killer. Karasuba was dying with laughter on the inside. She'd never realized how fun it could be to mess with people's heads outside of intimidation. The fact that the no-name investigator was standing in front of three beings that could kill him before he could even realize he was being attacked, and he had no fucking clue. And I was acting like an innocent kid idolizing "evil" people, the icing on the cake. Karasuba made a suspicious coughing noise a few times before her self-control seized command of her body again.

"Oh my ghoul! We're gonna be late!" I suddenly yelled, "Sorry mister CCG, we gotta go!" I grabbed Kara's hand and started pulling her away from the poor guy. Nishiki followed us with a tired sigh, and the investigator decided that we were just another crazy Japanese family.

Of course, just a few minutes later we were walking into Aogiri Tree's outpost in the 11th ward. I was getting all sentimental, it was the building that Kaneki was imprisoned and tortured at, and it was where I'd first gone on a rampage in my Kakuja form. The place was still torn to shit and filled with holes from my giant chimeric body tearing through the place. The building looked abandoned, but it was filled to the brim with the scent of ghoul, and it was fresh. I followed my nose, flanked by Karasuba and Nishiki, and found the source of the scent through a door down to the building's lower levels. Once we'd gone down the few flights of stairs that were past said door, we came out into a huge underground auditorium, just like one of the ghoul auction houses. We were on the bottom floor, in the sort of "arena" type floor thing in the middle, and the entire audience section was filled with masked ghouls.

"Huh, what a welcoming party!" I said cheerily, waving to all of the ghouls, as if they all weren't Aogiri Tree members that probably wanted to flay me alive and then tear me into tiny pieces to eat. The ghouls growled softly in a thousand voices. One of them stepped forward. I was honestly shocked to see Eto, her bitchness herself. She cut her mask of bandages off of her face, She was smiling victoriously down at me.

"So, you've come to die…" she smirked at me.

"Actually, no," I countered. She raised an eyebrow.

"You walked into the heart of our territory and you're helplessly outnumbered," she observed. The ghouls around us started to activate their Kagune. The room was filled with the faint light of the glowing Kagune. I could smell a bit of magic in the room, so I guessed that at least a few of them had gained magic from the flesh and blood that Kanou had taken from me during my second captivity. Now initially, I thought of just going around and kidnapping a few ghouls from the city and then leaving, drawing as little attention to myself. Then, I realized that I didn't need to hide. And, while I was at it, I was going to make a point. Scratch that I was going to drive a point in _hard_. By the time I left the city the entire ghoul community would know that trying to go after me or my… my friends… was a fancy way to commit suicide.

"Outnumbered? No, no, you don't have enough for that," I waved Eto's statement off.

" _I have an army_ ," Eto growled, the hundreds of ghouls surrounding us edging close. I laughed.

"Yeah, yeah you do," I agreed, making everyone there pause, save for my soul mate who knew what I was doing. "Thing is, _I have a Karasuba_." My glorious, sexy, sadistic, Seikirei drew her Tsunagi in a flash, hurling a wave of air pressure from the blade. It flashed across the room and _eviscerated_ the ghouls in front of us all at once. They slowly started to regenerate, but they weren't magical so they couldn't heal as quickly as us Carneval ghouls could. I drew IXA, the sheer fear factor of the thing making some ghouls actually trip and stop in their tracks, and my Rinkaku slithered out of my lower back.

"You know it's times like this that I wonder why I'm still alive, following you like this," Nishiki sighed, his Kagune activating as well. I chuckled, slipping my mask off. I didn't need it at the time.

"Kara-chan," I smirked, "for our honeymoon, let's _slaughter._ "

"Such a charmer," she chuckled, and we _moved_.

And ghouls started to die.

You know, after sparring against Kara for so long, it was pretty amazing to see the other end of things for once. I've said it before, but that girl is the scariest thing I've ever seen. She cut down ghoul after ghoul, each swing of her blade inflicted a fatal wound, and each swing flowed directly into the next without a moment's rest. All the while, she had the same lazy, content, sadistic grin on her face. Sure, the ghouls managed to heal, most of them at least, but she essentially killed something like 130 ghoul-level combatants in a matter of moments. I sure know how to pick 'em, that's all I can say.

Nishiki wasn't such a picture of deadly elegance, but he supplemented his physical combat with magic. He didn't use the brute force approach that I'd used with my Raw Magic blasts, he instead made tiny attacks with pinpoint precision. He shot raindrops at his enemies at the speed of sound, and when he needed an extra strong attack he fired a crescent-shaped blade of water. It was a minimalist style, though his body flipped and spun all over the place. It fit Nishiki, for a lazy guy like him to find a way to use magic in a way that was so incredibly cost-efficient.

I charged forward, stabbing with IXA and lashing with my Kagune. Unlike the last time I'd been in the city, I could fight without constantly paying attention to keeping my balance and the like. I had the same instincts when it came to walking, running, jumping, and all the other movements that are ingrained into normal people when they're toddlers. Now, I could fight them on even terms. Sort of. It was hard to call it even when I could shoot lightning from my fingers and _teleport_ whenever I wanted to. I was crude, wasteful in my physical movements and my magical use, but after having my magical core forcefully grown when I bonded to Karasuba, I had the magical capacity to withstand whatever kind of punishment I put myself through. I was a savage brute on the absolute bottom rung of skill, but I made up for my lack of skill in sheer overwhelming potential power and regenerative ability. It didn't matter what injury they inflicted on me, I never flinched or showed any kind of fear.

Oh, what a day. What a lovely day.

XXXXXXX


	16. Chapter 14: Carneval, Second Act: Part 2

**O.K. First of all I'm eternally super duper sorry I took 3 weeks to get this chapter published instead of one. My excuse is that I graduated from highschool, moved 1500 miles and had to pack my whole family's furniture and stuff by myself into the trailer we hired, and then started my new summer job the second day after getting to my new home after 1500 miles of driving. So… yeah, sorry, but I really have been busy.**

 **The aforesaid trailer is getting here this friday, so I don't know if I'll have time to write over the weekend, but I'll try and get my publishing back on my normal schedule. I apologize in advance if the chapters start coming out randomly or slower.**

 **Lastly, I plan on going back and reviewing the early chapters for editing and stuff once this hits 100k words. I need all the help I can get, so any hints, grammar advice, and things like that are appreciated. I'm not changing the plot, but I want to rework the beginning of this fic into something more attention-holding, and less… amateur-fanfiction-writer-y.**

 **Thank you all for bearing with me, and here's the continuation I should've had out a long time ago.**

 **Chapter 14: Carneval, Second Act: Part 2**

Duck. Slash. Leap. Twist. Ignore removal of three left fingers. Stab. Bite. Swallow. Punch. Ignore hole through abdomen. Charge. Lobotomize. Eviscerate. Bisect. Ignore removal of left brain. I grinned as my and Karasuba's euphoria fedback across our bond, sending us into an extreme emotional high as our elation bounces back and forth between us, strengthening every time.

Fighting was _intoxicating_ now that I didn't have to pay attention to every little muscle twitch so I stayed on my feet. I could react and act so much _faster_ now, and I could… not really relax, per se, but I could settle into the fight and just enjoy the exertion and the danger. It was going all too well. It barely took any effort to combat a ghoul below A rank. The fact that I was wielding the most infamous Kagune in history probably was too much for them to mentally handle, and so the majority of the ghouls didn't have the focus or the poise to match my physical abilities coupled with my fledgling skill. The stronger ghouls were more of a challenge, but they still fell, either defending against IXA and taking a fatal blow from my Kagune, or defending from my Kagune and taking a sword/lance point to the eye.

Then Eto had to go and fuck us over, because she's a bitch like that. She yelled out some command that I couldn't understand through the adrenaline-fueled haze over my mind, and then their magical units opened fire.

And when I say "fire," I mean fire. As in the whole arena thing went up in orange flames.

Kara jumped up and out of the fire, guessing that as magical constructs the flames wouldn't be put out with her usual method of blowing out the fire with pressure waves from her sword. She landed on the railing around the arena-like area in the center, and waded into the mob of ghouls in the seating sections near the walls. Nishiki did the same, flipping up to higher ground with the easy grace of a ghoul that has _breathed_ combat for years, and the two of them charged towards the mage-ghouls that were staying back away from the front lines. I stayed where I was, covering myself in a thin but dense layer of magical power, keeping the attacking magical flames away from my skin and clothes. It was incredibly effective, but it was equally draining, so I needed to end things right then and there.

Lucky for me I had the god damn cheat code.

My Kakuja burst out of the roaring flames, trumpeting in wrath, lightning crackling along my entire body. Fun fact about Kakuja: they naturally adapt according to the user's desire, I wanted my body to be resistant to flames, and lo and behold! The fire barely hurt. The magical energy in the flames was steadily devoured by the Rc cell flesh of my Kakuja, and the normal flames the process left behind sputtered out without the supernatural fuel to keep them going. I was larger now than I was the last time my Kakuja had graced the city, standing around 15 feet tall and over 40 feet long, counting my long, thin, serpent-dragon tail. Because of this, I was a larger target. However, it also meant that my claws and tail blades were just that much bigger and more effective. I fell onto the remaining ghouls and commenced a one-sided _slaughter_.

Seconds later Kara and Nishiki reached the mage-ghouls, cutting their way past the ghouls still standing between the mages and my comrades. The ghouls were trying to defend with "human wave" tactics, but tactics that win by overwhelming the enemy with numbers only works if using so many expendable units actually helps the matter. Karasuba and Nishiki were simply _too strong_ for those kinds of inefficient methods to succeed, as they could punch a hole straight through the defensive line by outmatching just the few ghouls immediately engaged with them. Everyone else had to wait their turn. Karasuba reduced her targets to chunky salsa with a series of slashes faster than anyone else could see save for my Kakuja's eyes, dodging their defensive magic with the least amount of effort needed, and generally showing off her god-tier skill. Her red Tsunagi Quinque pulsed with red light as the Quinque steel drank in small amounts of magic from the ghouls she cut. Nishiki took longer, but his water magic did well against their fire. Or something like that. Their defensive magic couldn't stop his raindrop bullets or water blade/scythe/things. You can't block a projectile moving at supersonic speeds with a wall of hot air. Their wall of fire was their only defense, and fire is really just air that's so hot it glows. In the end his opponents died too. Of course, they started regenerating almost immediately, but it wasn't as fast as ours, so they must've been new to the whole magic deal.

Eto charged, her Kakuja impacting mine with a visible shockwave. We grappled, arms flexing as our monstrous strength was exerted on each other, heads and mouths snapping for soft flesh, and Ukaku shards perforating whoever ended up moving into the target range of the other. If two rednecks wrestling in the mud ever turned into monsters that belonged in the worst nightmares of humanity, they'd look exactly like we did right then. We rolled, pushed, grabbed, bit, tore, stabbed, and did everything we could possibly think of to try and gain the upper hand in our brutal, animalistic struggle for dominance and survival. I dug my lower talons into the ground, and lunged forward with my mouth, trying to bite her Kakuja's head off or otherwise incapacitate the thing. She stopped me from even getting close by covering my head with Ukaku shards like a bad imitation of a pinecone. I growled. Lightning flashed off of my arms, coursing through her Kakuja with prejudice set to maximum. She screamed, the noise haunting. It was the first time that a ghoul Kakuja had ever made a noise of pain before. Around us, the entire fight ground to a sudden halt, the noise of Eto screaming echoing and reverberating around us. Imagine nails on a chalkboard mixed with an army of women screaming and add in a little eldritch horror, and that's pretty much the sound she made. She pulsed with magic, and I was thrown off of her by a wave of Raw magic. She panted.

" **You,"** she growled, " **I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"** She screamed/roared, and charged at me, magic wisping off of her Kakuja form eerily. It made her look like she was slightly phased out of reality, or some kind of ghost or apparition. It looked like she was surrounding by wisps of glowing mist.

"Oh fuck m-" I got out before she bodily tackled me, the Raw magic enhancing her Kakuja beyond even ghoulish capabilities. Unluckily, she was shorter than me, so when she hit me she was angled upwards. That mean that I hit the roof of the underground basement thing we were in with the force of a damn freight train, and I mean that without exaggeration. We exploded out of the surface of the ground in a cascading shower of debris, rock flying in every direction. I managed to push away in the air, and I landed on my rear legs, ready to go. We'd emerged just under one of the outside walls of the building that the Aogiri base was underneath, and she was hunched in the hole we made while I was crouched out in the street, where all the humans could see me. Eto charged through the dust cloud thrown up by our arrival, and collided with me again as the humans scattered like cockroaches. I lashed with my tail and cut off one of her Kagune-ish blades that grew out of her back like extra arms, which in another world might've evened the scales somewhat, but her regeneration was on par with mine and the arm reattached itself before it even had the chance to hit the ground. She laid into me with all four of her bladed limbs and her Ukaku shards, blurring around my vision the way that wasps constantly escape the motion-tracking abilities of the human eye, and slicing and impacting me with every blow holding several _tons_ of force. I struggled to keep my Kakuja form in one piece, and my dwindling magic supply fell lower and lower. I grimaced, and tried something that might give me an edge.

My humanoid body burst out of my Kakuja's chest, IXA in hand. I changed my Quinque to shield form and reinforced it with magic before colliding with Eto shield-first. It knocked her away of my Kakuja by nature of leverage and the maneuver's unexpectedness, and I immediately moved to attack her with my Kakuja form from the left while I attacked with IXA's transforming abilities from the right, not giving her the time to recover from being put back on her heels, however temporary the moment was. She currently had several advantages over me, the first being her magical reinforcement ability, among things like experience in combat and a greater number of limbs to attack with. However, I had one particular advantage that totally leveled the playing field. Yes, having to pay attention to my entire body at all times to keep my balance while walking, sitting, running, and everything else while splitting my attention to speaking, fighting, singing, or whatever was exhausting and a handicap, but as a result my ability to multitask was _unmatched_.

I simultaneously controlled both my humanoid and Kakuja body to attack her in tandem, each body herding her towards the attacks of the other. The sensations and experience of controlling two bodies at once isn't something that I can describe or put into words because the English language isn't geared towards such expressions of thought, but it was both stressful, and incredible. I had to give the activity all of my attention and focus, to the exclusion of anything else, relying on pure muscle memory to stay on my feet and fight. If I hadn't been sparring with Karasuba so much in spars that were only spars in name, then I would never be able to fight with my bodies separate. Splitting into two bodies restricted my actions in combat to those that I'd practiced to the point that the movements were automatic. Further, I couldn't use any magic at all while splitting my focus to such a degree, but it was perfect for the situation. And, I had a plan.

Eto might be a superior combatant against me, but even she couldn't split her attention to focus on both my human body and my Kakuja form at the level of combat we were engaged in. Aogiri spread magic around, giving it to their members, so I was no longer the big bad scary ghoul that was the only one to have magic. But this… this was something that couldn't be duplicated or learned. It only took a few temporarily crippling wounds from IXA while she was distracted by my Kakuja for her to stumble and show a moment of weakness. In that moment, my Kakuja lunged and dug its claws into her, holding her against the ground in a death grip. My Kakuja's tail sunk into the ground to act like an anchor and make sure that my Kakuja had all the leverage it needed to keep Eto from moving at all.

I had Eto pinned down and occupied. That was step one.

I heard the sounds of the approaching CCG, so I had my normal body slip its mask back on. It might not help all that much to keep my identity hidden, but it would minimize the number of investigators that had seen my face. I kept Eto busy as they approached, hundreds of the highly trained humans surrounding us. Suddenly, my human body vanished without a sound and reappeared next to one of the investigators with a Quinque.

"Thank you," I said politely as I snagged the Rc Suppressant off of his belt. I teleported back into the fight, and held my prize in my left hand and IXA with my right, standing right on Eto's sternum.. The Rc Suppressant was in an aerosol can, probably meant to be used like pepper spray or chloroform. I was taking the direct route. I had my Kakuja keep Eto held down, sacrificing a helluva lot of my remaining magic in the process as she tore gaping wounds into my Kakuja's body while trying to escape. I balanced on the unfirm platform of her Kakuja's torso precariously, and I lanced IXA into her Kakuja's chest with a wide Kenjutsu slash, momentarily revealing her human body inside. As fast as I could make my limbs move, I shoved the Rc Suppressant can into the wound, right up against her humanoid abdomen. Her Kakuja healed over the can just as it settled into place, but the damage was done. I had both my bodies back away quickly as I shot a small bolt of lightning at her Kakuja.

Her front bulged momentarily as the can of Suppressant exploded _inside her body_. Her Kakuja dropped like a puppet with its strings cut without hesitation, melting away as the Rc cells went inert like she was covered in some kind of acid. Eto's body was revealed as the Kakuja drained off of her, though she wasn't moving at all, completely paralyzed by the Suppressant. It had to have been excruciating to suddenly lose contact with all of the Rc cells in her Kakuja as the Suppressant cut off her connection to them while they were outside of her body. I know if that happened to me I'd probably fall into a vegetative state for losing so much of my primary neural tissue.

"How's it feel being on the other end of that stuff, bitch?" I breathed quietly, my Kakuja touching its nose to my lower back and vanishing back into my body. I walked over to Eto's paralyzed form, thinking over eating her. One one hand she had to have an astronomical Rc cell concentration, but on the other hand, she was stuffed full of Suppressant and I didn't feel like getting indigestion. The investigators watched hesitantly, obviously having recognized my Kakuja. I waved to them innocently, just to screw with their heads, and jogged back through the giant hole in the ground. Underneath, was the remains of the Aogiri base, with Karasuba and Nishiki standing guard around the ghouls that had strong enough regeneration to survive our assault, all of whom were eyeing the two Carneval-masked figures with terror. Kara-chan more than Nishiki, because she was clearly not a ghoul but was still licking her Quinque clean, but they were both getting looks of fear nevertheless.

"You won?" Nishiki raised an eyebrow. I couldn't see it behind his mask but I knew his expressions well enough to guess.

"Your faith in me is reassuring," I snipped, moving past the taller male to run my eyes over the prisoners of war. "So these are the idiots that thought that following Eto would end well?" I looked at all the minion-ghouls. They cowered under my gaze, understandably. If I was in their position, I probably would too. If I was a subordinate kind of guy, anyways, instead of the charismatic leader that I was. But that's beside the point. As I looked over them, I changed my mind from my initial plan involving them. Originally I just wanted to kill them all, but as it was I had a bit of an opportunity.

"What do you want?" one of the braver ones asked. He at least had the kahunas to look me in the eye.

"I want you to work for me," I said simply, my mind whipping up a sales pitch as they digested my unexpected response. Waste-not want-not, after all, and having subordinates that could regenerate would make all kinds of criminal activities infinitely easier.

"Why would we work for you?" one of them spat. He apparently thought that I couldn't make things any worse for him, or something along the lines of me being a tyrant that would torture him no matter what he said.

"Because," I held up a hand and extended a single finger in my usual manner of numbered list explanations, "firstly, I'll pay you. In cash or in other ways depending on availability and what you ask for. Second, I'll provide all the food you'll ever need. Third, I'll get you out of this shithole called Kakurega city. Fourth, I'll give the magical ones of you jump starts on learning magic. Lastly, I'll give you somewhere to live that's completely safe from being discovered." I let my words sink in. A few of the ghouls were skeptical when I used the word "magic," but the mage-ghouls all had expressions of realization, like they were just realizing that the power they'd been using was, in fact, magic.

"... tempting," one ghoul conceded, thinking it over.

"In any case you don't really have a choice in the matter, because the entire CCG is about to come down on this place and I'm your only way out," I shrugged. Karasuba snickered at the looks on their faces.

"Take each other's hand," Nishiki ordered, and when the ghouls had done so, I put my hand on one ghoul's shoulder, and took Karasuba's hand. Nishiki teleported away, heading off on his own briefly. I drew from Karasuba's magic, and teleported us all to the lobby of Carneval's new headquarters. I left Karasuba there to whip them into line and get them into rooms in the ex-hotel, and I teleported to the rendezvous point where Nishiki was waiting. We made eye contact, put our masks away, and I slipped my hoodie's hood over my head, and we walked out of the back alley we were in. Ahead of us was Anteiku.

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"Hello!" I called, my voice bright and cheerful as I saw Yoshimura making coffee behind the bar. Beside the old man, Nishki's girlfriend Kimi was doing the same. When she and Nishiki made eye contact they instantly froze and started going off into their own little world, so I ignored them and hopped onto the bar so I could see eye-to-eye with the tall shop owner, just like in the old days.

"Shin-kun, how have you been?" Yoshimura smiled.

"Not bad," I smiled, "I was in town, so I thought I'd stop by, maybe pick up a few things of Touka's while I was here."

"Oh?" he raised an eyebrow, stirring the coffee he was making, "I placed all of Touka's old things into storage in the back if you want them, I kept them in case you or she ever came back." He drifted off, looking a bit lonely.

"I'll make sure she comes to visit every once in awhile," I assured him. He must've been devastated, not knowing how we were doing and living mostly on his own after so long. He did say that he liked people, after all, and for a sociable person like Yoshimura to lose the majority of his close friends had to hit him especially hard. "And you know if you want to leave and come with us, you're welcome anytime."

"I know," he nodded gratefully, but didn't take the offer. I heard a wet noise, and I turned around to see Nishiki making out with Kimi. I turned away. It's not like I had anything against making out, so why would I make a big deal out of it? I didn't want to be a hypocrite when I eventually did the same with Karasuba, either. Karasuba's amusement flickered in my mind at the images passing briefly into her attention because of _that_ train of thought.

"On a more serious note," the humor eased off of my expression, "how are things in the city?" I kept my voice quieter, so the patrons of the shop couldn't overhear.

"Quieter," he murmured, "After the CCG combed through everything most of the more dangerous ghouls retreated down into the 24th ward. The only ghouls on the surface now are the ones that are the best at pretending to be human. Aogiri started making advances back onto the surface recently, acting more bold than they had any reason to be, but you seem to have nipped that in the bud." Yoshimura eyed me with a small smile. I wondered how he'd found out about my attack on Aogiri and Eto's arrest so quickly, but in the end I decided that I didn't need to know how his information network operated in a city I never wanted to come back to.

"Alright," I nodded, "I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright, and I wanted to give Nishiki the opportunity to see Kimi. I'll go grab Touka's stuff and be off." I hopped off the bar and walked through the door to the back of the shop. I liked Yoshimura, but our personalities were still too different for us to have real conversations. He was to pacifistic for me.

In the storeroom in the back of the shop was a bunch of boxes with all of the stuff we'd left behind. It was gathering dust in even stacks and piles, and I felt my heart go out to the old man, but I wanted to get back to Tokyo and the people that I actually cared about. I might feel empathy towards Yoshimura, but I was a selfish person at heart, and in the end whatever happened to him wasn't my problem. I walked up to a dusty soundboard and speaker set, and I poked it, shrinking the stuff down to a fraction of the size, and I stuffed it all into the pocket of my hoodie. I did the same with all of my and Touka's music collection. After that, I teleported back to the Carneval penthouse, not wanting to spend any more time at Anteiku being sentimental. I left Nishiki there, he'd find his own way home well enough.

I walked over next to the bar in our main lobby, and unshrunk all of the sound equipment, placing it up against the wall. I plugged everything in, working to plug all the right cords into the right ports. Finally, I pressed the power button, retrieved a particular CD, and started playing one of Touka's favorites, Gasoline by Audioslave. She came running out of her room, her eyes wide. I winked at her, and she smiled wide. She ran over and hugged me.

"Geese, aren't you a little clingy?" I remarked, squished against her in a bone-breaker hug.

"Thank you," she mumbled into the top of my head. I guess I did her a bigger favor than I thought. Bonus, cool.

"You're welcome," I smiled, "anything for my best friend." She chuckled a bit, like she was reminded that I was, in fact, her best friend. She probably did sort-of forget, I'd been spending most of my time with Karasuba, and she'd probably felt a little alone. I'd gotten her music collection back as a part-apology, part-"just because" kind of thing.

Karasuba interrupted my line of thought by letting me know that she'd gotten all of the mage-ghouls into rooms on the second-highest floor of our hotel's living space, and the non-magical ghouls on the floor just below that.

"Sorry, Touka, but I've still got one more thing to do at Kakurega," I spoke up. Touka nodded, and pulled away from the hug, going over her music collection greedily. She'd probably be at it for the next few hours, making sure that it was all there. And playing a bunch of music, but that was why I put it in the main room of our penthouse, our lounge/party room. I gave her hand a squeeze, and then teleported back to the ghoul city of the world, my mind settling back into familiar patterns as I sniffed the air, hunting for a particular scent.

It was time to find an expendable ghoul.

Because there were so few of the things above-ground at the time, it took me most of an hour just to catch wind of a ghoul. When I did, I was walking down a less-walked street. It was the kind of road that your mommy tells you to avoid, with shady people at the corners and alleyways dotting the sides. I was the badest cat there, so I didn't worry about shady people like that. I turned into the alley, and at the end of it, were there weren't any windows or observers, was a single male ghoul. He had flaming red hair, and looked half-irish or something. Japanese people don't grow beards like fantasy dwarves, so my guess was probably right. He was hunched over a rapidly-disappearing human body, with said body's blood leaking outwards underneath him. He had his Kagune out, a Rinkaku that came in the shape of a blood red thorned spear on the end of a segmented limb (AN: Lancer, anyone?). He still wasn't a problem. A lightning bolt to the head took him out of the fight before it even began.

It was pathetically easy. After fighting a single number Seikirei for so long and then a Kakuja with physical abilities to match said Seikirei, he was… underwhelming. I guess it made sense that after training against combatants that would crush even S rank ghouls, a small fry like my latest find wouldn't seem like much at all. Luckily for him… actually, unluckily for him, my lightning left him unconscious but alive. I threw him over my shoulder, ignoring the blood splattered across his plaid shirt and the shredded human corpse below me, and I teleported.

He got thrown into a hole I had Nishiki specifically burrow into the ground underneath the hotel, a few hundred feet from any openings in the rock that he could use to escape. The only light came from a rock that Nishiki had made glow with the color-changing charm. I would've strapped him to a table while I waited to test my theories, but… I didn't want to go near an operating table like that any more than the poor ghoul I was using for my experiment did, so he was just going to be trapped in a box. I would never let myself be near another operating table ever again, performing the scientific studies that I was planning on doing would be bad enough with the trauma I had from Kanou. Instead of being held in place without being able to move, the ghoul was simply kept in a small, dark, inescapable cage with no contact with the outside world save for me. Claustrophobia, ho!

I walked into Matsu's room, which was quickly growing to look more and more messy, haphazard, and, oddly, sterile as time went on. She had cords running everywhere connecting computers to other computers and computers to the radios and satellite uplink that were stashed in protected places in the building. She didn't care about cleanliness all that much, but she kept her room perfectly clean in terms of dust and grime, so that her electronics weren't harmed. She had most of the computers' monitors mounted to the walls up high, with the keyboards down lower. Karasuba was still bringing the fear of god into the new ghoul members of Carneval, so she wasn't there, but Matsu, Nishiki, Touka, and Ayato were there, planning out how Carneval was going to claw its way into the city to the point that removing us would be impossible. Their current project was front-businesses and things of that nature, places that would double as ways of staying hidden from law enforcement and as secondary sources of income. More money is always welcome.

"You're back? That was… shockingly quick," Touka grinned.

"Aogiri wanted me to find them," I shrugged. I didn't know if they were just waiting for me, or if they were hoping I'd stumble on them, or if it was something else, but there weren't many reasons for the ghoul syndicate to still be in their old buildings. Ayato looked vaguely relived. He did kind of leave Aogiri at the right time, he was probably thinking about what his life would be like if he hadn't turned a new leaf and joined up with our group of ghouls.

"Aogiri will most likely be unable to return from the 24th ward to the surface for a long, long time," Matsu guessed," you either stole or killed virtually all of their remaining members on the surface, not to mention handed their leader over to the CCG."

"I don't want to be overconfident, but we pretty much grew past Aogiri the moment I winged Karasuba," I smiled wryly. It made me nervous about hubris and overconfidence, but I was kind of overkill for any other ghoul at the moment outside of Carneval. I was used to a higher level of combat. If a gang member that was used to life and death combat fought against a civilian, the gangster would win unconditionally, just like ghouls beat ordinary humans, but if a trained soldier fought against the gangster? The trained soldier would _humiliate_ the gangster, and that was why I would win. I had a goddess of slaughter whipping me into shape every night and carving the ways of carnage into my mind and body, often literally. I couldn't even be said to have reached nearly my full potential, I still had a long, long way to go before I could consider myself to be a truly capable fighter. It was a terrifying thought, wasn't it?

"Magic does tend to make most conventional methods of combat obsolete, doesn't it?" Ayato laughed. I somewhat disagreed. If you had the physical might to make swordplay devastating enough to slaughter armies with impunity like a certain grey-haired psychopath I knew, then magic might only even the scales, but I did agree that magic was an extremely effective tool at amplifying virtually all forms of combat ability.

"Anyways," Kaneki sighed, trying to bring the conversation back to what they'd been discussing. "I thought about our front businesses, and I found a few that we might be able to buy out if Matsu's willing to launder us more money." Matsu made a face of distaste. "There's a casino in the southeast of the city that MBI allowed the yakuza to build after they bought out Tokyo and legalized gambling. Then they got rid of the yakuza, but the casino is still the only place for public gambling in the country. Recently it's been having a hard time because of the restrictions on tourism and travel in and out of the city, but it would still be a huge source of income. If we can figure out a way to bring it back to success, then we'd been earning huge numbers and Matsu wouldn't have to edit our bank account so much." Kaneki sent Matsu an understanding look. Good old Kaneki, always trying to help his friends with everything. It was a great idea, anyways. Every self-respecting criminal organization had to own a casino, where else do you meet with wealthy clients looking to put hits on their business opponents?

"That reminds me," I spoke up, "I was thinking of having some of our ghouls work as an assassination service. They're already good at killing people and not getting caught, and normal humans wouldn't even be able to hurt them." They all nodded thoughtfully.

"I'll talk to them, and see who's interested, I can get them organized," Ayato volunteered.

"Have them talk to Hinami too," Touka suggested, "her housecleaning spells would be perfect for erasing evidence."

"Good idea," Ayato nodded.

"So what do we call them?" Kaneki wondered.

"We should give a name to all the positions in Carneval," Matsu suggested, always the voice of reason.

"Well we are a Carneval," I chuckled, "we're are obviously the Ringmasters. Our human minions are the Clowns." They all laughed, imagining the faces of the highly trained ex-MBI grunts being called "Clowns" to their faces. "The ghouls are the Freaks, and our magic users can be called Diabolos. 'Little devils' and all that." I thought for a bit, "the assassin guild should be the Harlequins."

"... designations added to database," Matsu intoned, one of her screens flashing with information. She was creating a digital database with all the information we had on anything. I wanted to be able to find anything I wanted about anything by tapping into the information network of Carneval. It would make our Harlequins' jobs easier, for one, but it would make keeping Carneval incognito _exponentially_ easier.

"So anyways, what were the other businesses?" I brought the conversation back to the original topic.

"Right," Kaneki took a moment to find his train of thought. "I found three morgues and one crematorium, if we took them over we'd have a significant source of human flesh, as long as we can magic up a fake realistic enough to fool the humans."

"And there's no shortage of work at a morgue, ever," I chuckled darkly. Karasuba sent me a questioning thought, wondering what had me so sadistically amused. I led her to the memories of the recent conversation, and let her see for herself. She was getting better at seeing my mind as well as I could hers, but either I was talented in the mind arts or she was unsuited to them, because her progress was slow and it took her a lot of practice to make any headway. Our bond continuously strengthened as we grew more emotionally attached to each other, which helped, but she still had to learn to manipulate her own thoughts, a not entirely non-magical activity, to make full use of her link to me.

"To buy out all four of them would take about a half billion," Kaneki cringed, reading off of a notepad he had on the small table that we'd placed in the room so we had something to sit around. Half a billion yen, or about half a million American dollars, was a lot of money for someone in the middle class like Kaneki. However, I never lived on any kind of income, from the moment I was free I merely took what I wanted, and my viewpoint had a second pillar of support. Unlike him, I kept in mind that with bank accounts being digital, Matsu could literally give us _unlimited_ money. Her powers did have limits, but HOLY SHIT she was just as terrifying as Karasuba in her own way. Would introducing all that extra money into the system probably screw up the country's economy? Yeah, probably, but only if we started throwing around billions of U.S. dollars, and even then, _did I have a reason to care?_

"Matsu?" Nishiki prompted, and Matsu nodded in resignation. She was already getting used to ignoring the law. Fairly soon I was sure that giving us money from nothing wouldn't bother her conscience in the slightest. I knew her personal history, how she used to slaughter people alongside Karasuba without batting an eyelash, and how she was suddenly told that she was a despicable person for doing the one job she'd been raised for. Now, she was surrounded by ghouls and similar scum-of-humanity types, and her faith in the value of sentient life and obedience to the law was dwindling. Matsu left MBI because Miya told her that killing and serving MBI made Matsu a bad person. After spending some time among the reality of the world with Carneval, her blind belief in Miya's words was crumbling quickly. The death of innocence is a long, slippery slope, all of my collective memories agree on that. One of her screens flickered with bank information, showing a substantial deposit being placed into the account she'd made for Carneval, as she fabricated electronic paperwork and files that traced the money to an electronic transfer across an encrypted fake signal so that anyone that got curious would have a "legitimate" source. It was similar to using pig ashes in the crematoriums so that I could send the human bodies to the Freaks, because they needed to eat. Which reminded me.

"Oh, did you find a place to buy the medical supplies I'll need for my Rc cell research?" I turned to Matsu, inquiring about one of my more… difficult assignments to her. If I was going to learn about Seikirei and Ghoul biology to the point that I could combine the two, maybe even give myself Seikirei abilities, I needed equipment that could observe Rc cells in action, as well as magic to inspect the Alchemic aspect of the Rc cells. I couldn't just guess on anything either, I needed to be exact and make sure that nothing was going to go wrong with implanting a Kakuhou into Karasuba. My margin of error was even more strict than brain surgery could claim to match, because in my case if the Rc cells weren't willing to accept Karasuba's magic and bond with her properly, then she _would_ die, without exception, eaten alive by the organ that I'd placed within her. So I needed to understand Rc cells on a whole new level. I needed full biological lab equipment to study Rc cells down to the atomic level, and I needed to invent spells that could study the mystic side of the tiny symbiotic creatures. Kanou's memories placed me on the top echelons of Rc cell research already, but I knew that magic was a part of the strange organisms as well, and that pure biology could never _truly_ understand them. I needed to know Rc cells as well as the Black Alchemist that made them.

"No, not yet," Matsu shook her head, "I haven't found anywhere to buy reliable equipment without them asking for credentials, and in the medical field they all want paper copies signed by hand as proof of identity, not electronic records. At least the hospitals and suppliers that aren't MBI…" She sighed. MBI was still primarily a medical company, and it had a surplus of medical tech in its headquarters, but it was all literally bolted or welded to the building around it, and we would never be able to steal it, and that's saying nothing about the tracking components built into every unit so MBI's competitors couldn't reverse-engineer the cutting edge tech. MBI didn't put it's technology up for sale either, but even if it did none of us wanted MBI anywhere near where we lived, and they'd demand to be the ones to install all of the equipment themselves.

"That's... probably going to have to go on the back burner for now, actually" Touka spoke up from the side of the room. The rest of us looked, and saw the only screen still broadcasting the ordinary TV signal showing the face of the mad genius that owned MBI, spiky white hair, glasses, irritating grin, and all.

XXXXXXX

 **Okay a lot of you might be a little angry about the ending of the fight scene, I hope it's not too anticlimactic, but the outcome was based on a handful of factors that I weighed together. Zero was essentially two SSS class combatants fighting against a single SSSS class combatant, who frankly didn't know how to properly use the physical boost her magic gave her. Eto was like Zero used to be, so accustomed to fighting things with worse physical ability and no skill in combat that Zero's use of tactics caught her completely off-guard and let him sneak in a finishing blow. Zero might've been having a harder time trying to keep Eto from killing him, but he was still used to that kind of combat and he had enough of his focus to spare on coming up with a plan. Eto didn't have the muscle memory or habits or reflexes to try and do the same thing.**

 **So, Zero wins with cheap shots, because that's how real combat is. In the end one of you will live because you made the other guy die faster than he was making you die.**

 **I can't make any promises, on account of having to unpack a whole house's worth of stuff this weekend, but I'll do my best to get the next chapter within a week and after then I should have all the time I need to stick to the usual schedule.**


	17. Chapter 15: Advent of the Seikirei Plan

**Chapter 15: Advent of The Seikirei Plan**

We all watched the lone screen as the music played, and Minaka sat at his desk. He was smiling like the cat that got the canary, both proud of himself and satisfied over the experience.

"Da da daaaa!" he cheered grandly, sweeping his arms wide open like some kind of prophet. "Behold the moment that the Age of the Gods begins to manifest!" He leapt up to his feet and started doing some strange kind of small celebration dance as he continued to talk. "Enough of the little Seikirei have been winged for the next Phase of the plan to begin! Prepare yourselves for the advent of Ascension!" He struck one last pose, and the screen went dark.

"... what is he doing?" Touka groused. I looked at her with a bit of confusion, before slapping myself in the forehead. She wasn't involved with our Seikirei all that much, so she didn't know what the Seikrei Plan was at all.

"He's a crazy moron that wants to make the whole city into a host for gladiator fights between Seikrei, all in pursuit of some 'Age of the Gods' bullshit," Nishiki sighed, "As far as we know the Seikirei will all kill each other until only one remains, if they follow along with his plans."

"Oh," Touka blinked. "And I thought Tsukiyama was crazy. So it's like some kind of Hunger Games type thing?" Ah, leave it to Touka to be the other person in our group to make all kinds of references.

"Pretty much," Kaneki shrugged.

"Wait…" Touka visibly bristled, "... was I the only one to NOT know about this?" ALERT, ALERT, violent Touka is incoming. I teleported silently out of there while she was glaring at Kaneki and Nishiki, who were fidgeting under Touka's glare. Back in my suite, Karasuba was sitting on our bed. Yes, our bed, because we're technically married and with our psychic bond we'd be virtually as close no matter how far apart we slept. At least this way we could cuddle. Cuddling is relaxing, it actually triggers a hormone shift in the brain, and to be completely honest Kara is gorgeous. Sue me.

"Good to know you think I'm pretty," Kara grinned warmly at me, though it came with the slightly rabid glint in her eyes that never left. She had one of her western steel swords across her lap, and she was looking over it to fix any flaws in the edge and perform other general maintenance. The tools for the job were scattered on our comforter to her right. It got the blanket a bit dirty, but I could erase any dirt and damage from existence with my _mind_ so neither of us really cared about that.

"Hmm, you think I'd let you stick around if you weren't?" I teased the Black Seikirei daringly, taking her sword between two finger and placing myself on her lap. She cupped the top of my head with her chin, and continued her work. She was currently trying to clean bloodstain off of the blade, which meant that this was a new addition to her collection, as she'd never allow something like that to happen, _ever_. Kara snickered at my words. There was never any fear of rejection in her, as unlike any other Seikirei or beloved she could literally feel my attachment to her at all times. Soooooooooo many pointless arguments are completely bypassed.

"Those ghouls from Aogiri were shocking easy to handle once you fed them your sales pitch," Karasuba whined half-heartedly, "they're all set up with rooms, and I told them to go to Hinami to get their uniforms." Hinami had become our Support/Auxiliary/Logistics member the same way she fell into the housecleaning job back at our last safehouse. She didn't ask anyone, didn't complain or say anything at all, and just started directing things. We hired a maid service a while back, and Hinami took control of them like some kind of heroic general, and after Hinami talked with them about their job, the maids were seen going at their duties with a fanatical persistence and diligence. It was slightly unnerving, because I knew that Hinami would never use any kind of mind control on them, so what the bloody hell did that little girl tell those maids to make them so inspired?

I didn't know if I really wanted to know. I like being lazy.

Hinami was also in charge of our resources not long after she inspired the maids. She invented a spell that lets her replicate physical objects by condensing the air and other physical matter into a pattern copied off of something in front of her. She made all of the uniforms this way, holding a completed uniform in her left hand and forming the duplicate in her right. Our uniform was made after a long, careful, ten minute discussion with our usual decisiveness. Navy blue cargo pants and black combat boots, black longsleeve shirt, Navy fingerless gloves, and a navy blue vest with a high collar and armored plates inside it made of Quinque steel. The vest couldn't be pierced by any weapon not made of Quinque steel, and I was working on a spell that could negate the blunt force of the incoming blow as well. The uniform was completed by a Hood on the vest in the same color and with the same armor, and a Venetian Carnival mask. The mask was porcelain white and without a mouth, like a golem, or a mannequin. Whatever part of Carnival they were a part of was written in elegant kanji on the forehead of their mask, their left shoulder, and their upper back in silver. The uniforms didn't show any of their faces or any of their skin other than their fingers, and it made the whole place look especially professional. The only uniforms with any kind of individuality was the Freaks, who needed openings in the back of their shirts and vests so their Kagune wouldn't destroy the uniform when it was employed.

"Hinami's going to be busy as hell," I sighed. We'd just recruited close to a hundred new ghouls all at once, and so far Hinami could only produce one duplicate at once. She had a fairly large reserve of power, but she still could only duplicate the uniform around 20 times in one sitting. She had several days of work ahead of her with all of her other jobs taken into account. She'd have a much easier time of it if she was as old as Touka and the other ghouls. They were 17 and were passing into their second magical maturity. The second maturity slowly increases the magical's control over their magic, and thereby eliminates wasted power from spells and by stopping the magical's power from being subconsciously leaked. All magicals that produced magical power slowly leak a small amount of power proportional to how much power they have at maximum. This is to stop them from getting overfull of magic while their magical core is developing and popping them like a grape. Once the core is fully formed, it can handle the "pressure" of not leaking magic and holding that extra tiny bit of power inside. The only reason that I could use magic so frequently despite my age also being really low was because my magical core was _massive_ , and I was only just started to understand that now that I was surrounded by other magicals. Whereas Hinami could teleport once or twice and then take a break from using magic for the rest of the day, I could teleport for a full hour non-stop before I ran out of power, and even then I was back to full capacity within an hour.

The scary thing was, _I didn't leak any of it._ At my age with my level of power I should be making everything around me _sparkle_ with the sheer amount of magic I should be leaking. Except, I leaked absolutely none. It was terrifying because literally _I should be dead_. I should've died over a decade ago while I was a toddler, if I didn't leak magic back then. It was just one more question left unanswered by the increasingly inadequate amount of information that the ghouls' creator had left in Rc cells.

"She's a big girl," Karasuba shrugged uncaringly.

"I'm going to be busy too," I added after a moment, "I have a ghoul to experiment with now. I plan on making a Quinque from him first, so I can observe the moment the Rc cells shift from being living cells to being… not quite living steel. Matsu is still working on the list of Seikirei I can use for my experiments. She doesn't want me doing it at all, but she's listening to Nishiki." Karasuba grimaced angrily when she heard about Matsu being pacifistic and idealistic. Karasuba had many, many psychological scars and some of the biggest were from her friends telling her that she was a bad person and then abandoning her. I shifted my head under her chin to remind her that she wasn't alone. I was alone in Kanou's lab, and she was alone and surrounded by humans and subordinates. Neither of us had to be alone any more.

"I'll probably whip the new Freaks into shape then," she sighed, "I'll get bored with all the science stuff going on."

"I know," I chuckled, and Karasuba dug her chin painfully into the top of my head for a moment.

"So who did end up winning?" I asked her, referring to a little contest I challenged her to when we went back to Kakurega.

"I don't know," she smirked, "I got 397." I groaned.

"252," I sighed. Karasuba did a lazy fist pump as a cheer. "And we both know the only reason that I couldn't get more was because I had to handle Eto, and no matter how strong she was she still only counts as one." The perfect game for a young couple, we competed to see who could land the most killing blows. Living targets required.

"Ah, and wasn't that a delicious sight," she crooned, placing her sword aside. I felt a particular kind of affection stemming from her memories of me slaughtering the ghouls of Aogiri. I chuckled, and turned on her lap, reaching up to pull her into a kiss, her arms wrapping around my neck. We spent the next few hours "relaxing." We didn't do anything our parents wouldn't approve of, mind you, if either of us actually had parents.

XXXXXXX

"Zero," Touka sighed, pointing at my face. I blinked, and ran the back of my hand over my lips. I saw a dark red lipstick stain on my hand as I pulled it away, and I sighed. A quick spell vanished the evidence from my face and my hand. Several feet away on the leather couches we'd placed in our lounge on the top floor, Kaneki, Ayato, and Nishiki snickered. Nishiki had Matsu leaning up against him where they sat on the leather sectional, and he was looking at me knowingly as he laughed. He was the only person there that understood the kind of bond Seikirei evoked.

Not that that made it any less embarrassing.

I quickly pretended that nothing had just happened, and I returned to my previous task, which was pouring myself a shot of vodka. Regenerative healing factor means no getting drunk and no hangovers. I tried my first shot of alcohol not long after we moved into our new penthouse, and I found I liked the taste, so I started a drinking habit. Of course, because I never got drunk I couldn't get addicted to the substance, but I did drink pretty much every day. We had the money to spare, and it wasn't unhealthy to me because my Rc cells absorbed and converted any harmful chemicals into useful ones. I could confidently say that as a 13 year old I could drink any Irish, German, or Russian pub under the table by myself. It was one of the only things that could be considered masculine about me, with my tiny humanoid body and almost-at-puberty voice. It's easy for trained men like our Clowns to look down on a "child," even a ghoul child with scary magical powers, but when they see said child downing shots of hard alcohol like mountain spring water, they tend to take you a bit more seriously. That's one of the added benefits that I'd found a use for in drinking. It also was one of the few things that my ghoul tongue didn't think disgusting. Most ghouls drink fermented blood as a kind of faux wine, but us magical ghouls could eat normal food, and our sense of taste was somewhere in between humans and normal ghouls. Alcohol was one of the things we were lucky enough to be able to taste properly.

As I put the glass to my lips my left hand shot up and grabbed a knife out of the air, and without hesitation, flung it at Touka. She caught it, and threw it at Nishiki.

It was one of the games we'd invented to stave off boredom. We made sure that Carneval was capable of running itself, because we wanted to have a cushy life not a stressful and busy one like CEOs of a megacorporation. Some of the Diabolos were given leadership titles, and they were going out in squads to claim the area around our headquarters away from the other gangs. Anyways, our game consisted of three knives. Each person had to catch any knife heading their way with one hand, and then throw it at someone else. We were ghouls, so if we missed the catch we would be fine, and with our reflexes the knives were flashing around the room in what would be a blur to a normal human eye. Karasuba let us volunteered a set of kunai for the game, but we started using all kinds of knives like cleavers, steak knives, bread knives, combat knives from our stache, basically every knife with a sharp edge.. Surprisingly, it was actually her idea. All of us were doing other things at the same time, like me with my drink, Touka with her music beside the bar, and Ayato reading through the list of our "employees." The game was for practicing spacial awareness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, multitasking, and several other things like that. It's all a part of her big training regiment that she's dreamed up to turn us magical ghouls into somewhat competent fighters with actual skill in combat. We might be used to life and death struggles the way a sailor is used to his boat swaying in the water, but we weren't "skilled" by any means. I was the most skilled person in the room, other than Karasuba. Kara found this situation… distressing, and was acting to correct it by dreaming up ways to train a group of people with superhuman physiques and instincts as well developed as ours. She seemed to find it fulfilling.

Kaneki caught a knife and threw it at Ayato, and caught a second one a split second later and threw it at Touka.

Downstairs, a construction crew was renovating the lower floors, including the lobby, the parking garage, and the storage space. The storage space was being completely redesigned into a dojo-esque training area with a firing range for the humans, and open spaces for the ghouls and humans to spar and train. Karasuba and I both agreed to keep sparring at our old place where we wouldn't have an audience, but everybody else was going to be using the new training area. The lobby and parking garage were basically being refitted with top-quality decorations, flooring, paint, and the like. We were an upcoming multi-billion dollar corporation, there was no way we were going to be housed in a shabby or sub-par building. The lobby was given marble columns, with sweeping vaulted ceilings and dark granite flooring. The construction was following the color scheme that Touka had commented on one day while cleaning blood off of her mask. Porcelain white and brass or gold were our two main colors, with black to form contrast, and any other colors indicating each individual part of Carneval. The Clowns were designated by silver, the Freaks by Crimson, the Diabolos by Brass, and the Ringmasters by gold and whatever other color they felt like. All of the Ringmaster masks had a gold section on the top of their mask like a visor or the front of a hat and had lips over our mouths, while every other mask was just featureless porcelain save for the eyes and nose.

Our little party on the top floor was also a kind-of-celebration for buying out our first legitimate businesses. Carneval Inc. was now the proud owner of the only casino in Japan, as well as a chain of 7 morgues and crematoriums total. Literally minutes after we bought the casino and Matsu finished the paperwork to direct its earnings to a bank account for Carneval's legitimate businesses money started being deposited. Four days later we had almost a quarter million dollars in the account. Truthfully all of us were surprised by the sheer income the place pulled, but being the only casino in the entire country, it had such a massive customer base that its income was incomparable to other countries' casinos. It helped that we got a full 40% of the building's profits. Matsu is a surprisingly good negotiator, especially when she's trying to help us in the few ways she can without breaking the law or killing.

It wasn't raining, but the sky was covered in dark grey clouds, and lightning flashed over us every few minutes.

Hinami caught a knife between her index and middle finger without even looking, and with the same lack of effort, flawlessly threw the knife at Ayato's right eye.

Matsu had been keeping a close eye on Minaka, MBI, and the other Seikirei. They'd had their first "competition" and I was somewhat impressed by the ruthlessness that even the soft-hearted of the Seikirei could act with. The Jinki… I wanted one. Karasuba knew almost nothing about them except that they were what the genetic adjustments to the Seikirei were performed with. Having a Jinki would let me learn about Seikirei biology at an extremely accelerated pace compared to just performing biopsies and tests. I was going to go and take it from the guy that won it, but Kara stopped me. She knew the guy that had it, and he was a friend of Miya's. I couldn't harm him or Miya would go on the warpath, and not even Karasuba wanted that at the moment. That didn't mean, however, that I couldn't have it stolen from him. Miya didn't have Matsu feeding her information all the time now, so Miya's ability to stay informed on current events had been severely hamstrung. I would sent a Harlequin to sneak it and take it when Seo was out, or in the worst case hit him and his Seikirei with a sleep hypnosis during the night and steal in while they were home. Magic is cheating and I will never play fair.

Karasuba lazily caught a pair of knives with one hand at the same time, catching the blades between her fingers and flicking them at separate targets. At first everyone else was nervous about throwing sharp objects in her direction, but she told them that because it was a training exercise then they were required to do so. She didn't want to get bored watching everyone else play the game.

I still didn't have the equipment to properly examine the ghoul I'd taken for my Rc cell research, so I just made sure to place a shipment of human meat in his "cell" once a week, and otherwise kept him sedated with hypnosis. I didn't want him going crazy from being trapped in a box and killing himself.

Hypnosis was something that I'd been getting a lot better at now. I formed a set of rules and privileges for the Diabolos of Carneval, where they were allowed to use each other to test spells, but only with consent and only when it won't completely remove the target from the workforce (comas, losing limbs, things like that). I abused this rule, along with the help of some actual volunteers, surprisingly, to learn how to properly influence the minds of others. Before, I pitted my mind against the targets in a battle for supremacy, completely dominated the mind of the other person with my own. I figured out quickly that I could save a fuckton of effort if I just inserted false memories or a command, and let his own mind do all the work in getting the target to do what I want. Done properly, the target didn't even know they were being controlled because it appeared to them like they were making their own decisions. They technically were, I was just making them choose to do what I wanted by manipulating their memories and emotions. It took eating a psychologist with a Doctorate to fully grasp how to do it, but he wasn't hard to find, and now I had a new lifetime of memories in my head. Coupled with my Hypnosis, I learned to use telepathy on any target. Nowadays I kept my mind stretched a decent distance around myself, keeping me totally aware of all the minds in my vicinity, be they man, woman, animal, or insect. Even plants had minds, though they were extraordinarily simple and I could barely even comprehend their thought processes because of the difference in perspective.

I picked up my vodka bottle and glass, one in each hand, and flicked the knife heading my way at Kaneki without touching it. I let the bottle and glass go, walking towards where Kara was sitting, the bottle pouring another shot while floating in front of me.

Yeah, telekinesis bitch. My Raw Magic blasts were essentially just applications of kinetic energy, I just taught myself to do it in smaller and smaller amounts. I could only split it between three or four objects at once, but it didn't actually take all that long to pick up how to do it. It seemed like all of us magic-using ghouls were learning new spells faster and faster as we learned. Something like "learning how to learn" every time we puzzled out a new application for our magic, and over time we mentally got used to twisting our magical power into new patterns. I sat down next to Karasuba, another shot glass floating over in front of her while the bottle poured her a shot. Karasuba hated Sake, she didn't like the aftertaste, but she was a fan of alcohol. Most warrior-types are.

Another thing that occurred to me that helped my telekinesis and telepathy was that magic was not a physical entity. This might seem obvious, but the important thing is that if it's not a physical entity than things like distance and location don't matter. I don't need to send my magic out from my hand to effect the shot glass and bottle. I simply direct my magic to do it, and my magic affects the object just the same no matter where it is in relation to me. It was a supreme breakthrough with my lightning. Previously, I was firing electrons and guiding their path, which was an annoying process to do because I had to keep track of it all. Now, I simply gave the target an extreme static charge and lightning happened on its own, without need of my direction. I could even be precise down to the point of a pencil using this method of lightning evocation, because the lightning will always hit the charged area and nowhere else.

"For Carneval," Karasuba downed the shot, joining in the little celebration.

"You know…" Touka suddenly spoke up, gaining everyone's attention as she listened to her music through headphones on a low volume.

Nishiki flicked a knife away towards Ayato.

"I think this is the most peaceful and safe I've ever felt," she commented, gesturing to our surroundings. That being a building as heavily manned as a military compound with highly trained soldiers, and our own private army of monsters right out of humanity's nightmares. MBI and Minaka might be out there doing crazy shit and ruining lives but here, surrounded by the results of our effort and planning, we were safe. Secure. Happy. We had people around us to call friends and virtually everything that we could want was at our fingertips whether through our physical might, magical power, or financial status. After eating that psychologist I knew about the Hierarchy of Needs, which was a supposed checklist to being happy, and as of that moment we had virtually every single thing on the list.

"To Carneval," I smirked, downing a shot of expensive vodka as I reclined in the lap of a gorgeous woman.

To think a not even two years ago I was nothing more than Specimen Zero in the secret lab of a madman. Funny how luck changes.

Hinami flicked a knife at Kaneki, catching him off guard. The knife sunk into Kaneki's skull with a _thunk_ , and Kaneki groaned, pulling the knife out and letting the wound heal. Hinami giggled.

XXXXXXX

Watching ten men practice sword forms in sync is impressive. Watching a hundred is even more impressive. Standing on an armored balcony over a training hall while watching a few hundred subordinates practice with handguns in perfect sync? Priceless.

All members of Carneval were going to be held to a certain standard of skill. Other gangs might have training to get their members used to killing, but our members were going to be _soldiers_. Every member of Carneval was going to know how to fight and kill with knives, fist, pistol, and rifle, and how to pick locks, sneak through urban landscape, and lie through their teeth. Most gangs lost men because their weaker members didn't have any kind of real fighting skill and get shot. In Carneval's case… well, our weakest men are all going to be as well trained as U.S. marines, and we're going to have highly trained ghouls on top of that. And then above that we have magicals. Even including the Seikirei, all told Carneval is now the baddest cat in the jungle.

Karasuba was sleeping off her small hangover. Seikirei still had them, as even Karasuba didn't have a healing factor beyond that of a normal human, and alcohol hit her at full strength. Otherwise she'd probably be down there terrorising all the men that made their movements a half inch out of place.

"Your target is a man named Seo," I said to the young man next to me. He used to be a member of Aogiri, but he was one of the ghouls that only did so because he couldn't protect himself from the CCG's genocidal tactics without help. He leapt at the chance to work for me, and he was now one of the squad leaders of the Harlequins. I had at least one Harlequin following every Seikirei now, hidden under stealth magic, and all of them were magic-capable ghouls. This particular jester was not part of the information network, and so he and his squad were getting a special assignment. "He has a pair of Seikirei, twins that control lightning. They're the elemental type and don't know how to fight physically. However, the problem is that they're protected by a combatant that not even all of Carneval together would have a decent chance of winning against, so _they cannot be harmed_. I want to to steal an object from them called a Jinki. It's potentially dangerous, so don't touch it with your bare skin. Go and get started." Without looking at him, I gave him his orders.

"Understood," he responded, and vanished in a soundless teleport. See, that's one of the things that I think a lot of idiot masterminds just can't seem to understand. They build up a huge separation between themselves and their forces, requiring their men to call them "sir," "your highness," and "exalted one." No, it's inefficient, and it only serves to stroke the ego of the commander and cause emotional discord between the commander and his forces. I only required obedience when commanded, and that was pretty much it. My men were allowed to do whatever they wanted when I or the other Ringmasters didn't have them doing something, and they didn't have to bow, kneel, or any of that unnecessary crap. If I give them an order, I simply want an acknowledgement of understanding, and then action. Clean, efficient, and professional, that is the way I wanted Carneval to work.

I looked over the minions… no, _soldiers_ practicing one more time, and then I teleported as well.

I reappeared next to a Harlequin watching a Seikirei and her Ashikabi eat brunch in their apartment through their window.

"Report," I said, and the Harlequin complied.

"They've spent the day in their apartment, not going anywhere and with the Ashikabi expressing fear over losing his Seikirei in a fight if they go out. They are on guard, but they think that they're safe as long as they stay hidden inside their apartment," the Harlequin listed in a quiet but confident voice, keeping his eyes on the Seikirei's house.

"Good work," I smirked, and filled the Seikirei's apartment with Sleep Hypnosis. The Seikirei and Ashikabi dropped like lifeless puppets, and the Harlequin and I quickly teleported in, and grabbed both of them. One more teleport and we were in Carneval's… detention facility. It was technically a prison, but the room I gave them was a fully furnished one with a bed, couch, TV, bathroom, pretty much everything that their apartment had. I left them there with a note. It told them that I was the Ashikabi of Seikirei 04, and I had the help of Seikirei 02, and that I was willing to protect them from the Seikirei plan, and that the room they were in was undetectable to MBI. It told them a bunch of lies about how I wanted to protect them because I wanted to protect the Seikirei and their bonds with their Ashikabi.

The truth was, I was going to shamelessly experiment on them and erase their memories afterwards. With them being stuck in the same room 24/7, they'd never realize that several hours or a few days had gone by without them noticing. This way I could experiment on them without them trying to escape. It was in this way that I completely captured and enslaved the Seikirei #30, Nadeshiko.

I then teleported to the Harlequin headquarters. Each branch of Carneval had its own floor in the hotel. The first couple of rooms were combined into a headquarters for each branch. The Harlequin HQ had a wall dedicated to all of the branch's assignments. I walked up to it, and changed the standing orders about Seikirei 30, shifting them to covering up her and her Ashikabi's disappearance instead of following their movements. Even during the few minutes that I was there, Harlequins were silently teleporting in and out, passing paperwork to each other, exchanging keys, badges, IDs and other things like that. Silent teleportation was a must-have for my assassin guild, and it truthfully wasn't that hard to teach once I figured out how it actually worked. Teleportation was taking the space you occupied and shifting it to another location, pulling you along for the ride. It normally made noise because you didn't properly isolate the space you're moving, but if you practiced enough and your Magical Core was developed enough, then you could completely isolate yourself from the rest of reality for the brief moment that it takes to move from point A to point B, which results in the teleportation being completely and totally silent. All of the magic-capable of Carneval knew how. Kaneki had actually made a list of required spells, things like silent teleportation, repairing, hypnosis, essentially the basic skillset of what they could use to keep from leaving behind evidence for the Law, and to complete missions in the most efficient manner.

The whole place was actually looking more and more like a real military as days went by.

Which I didn't really mind, militaries were normally very effective in accomplishing their goals. War is the exception, because that involves two militaries working against each other. The difference between Carneval and a Military, was that our goals were completely selfish. Our ghoul contingent were allowed to drink on the job. Everyone can go commit crimes in their free time as long as they don't get caught, or at least do something to lead the Law to us. We weren't working for the sake of a country's people, or for an ideal. Carneval's goals were the accumulation of money, and the accumulation of combat strength. Money so we could do whatever we wanted, and combat strength to scare off the people that want to screw with the first goal. In any case we were living in Tokyo, which was Sovereign Territory owned by MBI, specifically Minaka, so if we really wanted to we could seize power and be a nation in our own right. Maybe some day if it's worth it.

In truth, I'd say that at the moment in terms of sheer military might we could match MBI in a straight fight. Unfortunately, straight fights are a fantasy, and MBI would broadcast the shit out of that to the world, portraying us as criminals. And on top of that… Minaka was a bit of a wild card. He was a well-known genius of the highest caliber, and yet he always acted like a child to the point that you'd never suspect the sheer intelligence of the man. Further the man was in charge of _modifying magical creatures_ , like Kanou, and I learned my lesson when it comes to thinking you've checkmated such a man. In any case, I was going to have Harlequin map out MBI tower, and search it for anything out of the ordinary. Sometime soon, I was going to personally assassinate Minaka, with plenty of backup just in case. As long as Minaka owned the city, he was a potential threat to Carneval, and that's not even mentioning the S-Plan and the potential ramifications of a public gladiator war between supernatural creatures.

I felt Karasuba wake up across our bond, and I teleported to go give her a mug of Anteiku coffee.

XXXXXXX

 **New character! Seikirei 30, an OC that I take credit for creating. That's pretty much everything about her at the moment, so… yeah.**

 **My new job is great, I'm working in an office and occasionally I have the chance to write so it looks like I will be back on schedule now.**

 **Some of you may have wanted the Seikirei Plan to be a bigger part of the plot. To be frank, it's not going to be a main crucial part of the story. Nobody in Carneval gives a shit about it (except for Matsu), and not even MBI is powerful enough to trifle with Carneval as they are.**


	18. Chapter 16: Where is the Magic?

**Chapter 16: Where is the Magic?**

So, let me start by saying that the fact that I can eat memories is the greatest thing since pants were invented. I had my test subject ghoul sedated with Hypnosis and floating in the center of his cage, as I held him up with telekinesis. My first few experiments were to confirm what I knew from Kanou and the other scientists in the CCG. So far, I had no discrepancies. I actually made a Quinque out of his Kakuhou once, but it was a low-quality one because I didn't have the right equipment to do it and I barely knew how to fake the process with magic. It was hard because Quinque steel and Rc cells are so incredibly resistant to magic of any kind. However, after making the Quinque, I had a sudden idea, and wondered why the hell a sadistic mad genius like Kanou never thought of it.

Quinque leather.

I skinned the ghoul, and tanned his skin into black leather in a process similar to making Quinque steel. The result: I had a light, strong material impervious to all damage not from extreme physical force or Rc cell blades. Only magical ghouls could wear it, because it needed a bit of magic from us to live off of, but the leather was light, flexible, strong, and comfortable, and when I say strong I mean that you could shoot it with artillery rounds and you might scratch it. Us magical ghouls almost always end up tearing normal clothes somehow, be it from activating our Kagune, moving too quickly and breaking the seams, or tearing the clothes through similar methods. Quinque leather was strong enough to withstand the punishment of a magical ghoul fully showing off its physical abilities without any visible sign of damage, at least after the hell I put it through.

It made me want the cell cloning system that I had Matsu looking for even more than I originally wanted it. It was part of the medical equipment that I needed to _really_ put Kanou's knowledge to use and find out if Karasuba could go through ghoulification. But, I mean, awesome clothes that are virtually indestructible and let you walk away from a barrage of bullets looking even less scratched than before. Why wouldn't I be excited about it. It would make leather-fetish-Kaneki happy, and probably Ayato too. Hinami would be happy that she didn't have to fix our clothes as much, and Touka would just think it was cool on principle, invincible leather clothes, that is.

I just wanted to be careful we didn't look like a shitty punk band wearing all black leather. That would be humiliating.

Carneval was starting to take off. The casino was pouring money into our accounts, especially after I had some of our magicals hang out at the place and… encourage the patrons with a bit of light Hypnotism. Our Clowns were ruthlessly culling the crime around all of our businesses and buying up land and buildings to connect our territory into a cohesive whole. I doubt Minaka would've let us buy up so much of his property, but we were offering ludicrous payments _in cash_ for each bit of land and each building we bought, so the MBI board or whoever was in charge of their land sold it to us immediately. Paying twice the actual value will do that. We were rich enough to do so.

All of the normal ghouls were getting restless. I had them placed a floor below the magicals, so that the magic leaking out of the Diabolos would stave off the Freak's hunger, but they were ghouls and instinctively they knew they needed to hunt and eat, despite being able to survive off of nothing but magic. So, the crematoriums and morgues that we bought started delivering, sending raw material to our kitchens, where real meals were prepared for the ghouls. Hamburgers made from ground flesh and buns made from bread made from human bone were a favorite. Hinami was getting scarily creative, though Ayato helped her with handling the ghouls. Hinami did all of the housekeeping-type jobs on her own, but when it came to keeping subordinates in good condition, Ayato could put his time in Aogiri to a productive use. Together, they dreamed up all of the meals for our ghouls and set prices on each meal, just like a normal cafeteria.

All fun stuff, which led me to a bit of a problem.

"We can't properly protect all of this stuff we're buying, not even with all of the ghouls and magicals we have," Ayato explained to me, "we could post a man at every block, but they'd be taken out by the Disciplinary Squad with ease, none of our ghouls have any experience fighting a Seikirei-level combatant. We could group them together, but then there'd be gaps in our patrols and we'd have vulnerable points for MBI to exploit. Matsu can't hide that much of the city while actually staying _hidden_ , so we either need more men or a way to keep our property under surveillance without having people there."

I sighed.

"You know this is really killing the mystery of owning a big corporation, there's always a shortage of something," I whined. "I'll talk to Karasuba, see if she has any ideas." I walked away from Ayato and the map on the table that he was looking over, a few division leaders with him. The map had red string marking our borders with MBI, and thumbtacks to represent our forces, blue for human and red for ghoul.

Karasuba was lounging in the Japanese style bath in the penthouse, humming a funeral dirge to herself. I walked in and poked her on the back of the head. Despite her eyes being closed, she knew exactly where and who I was, and not just because of our bond.

"Yes," she hummed to me with a playful smirk, "do you need something?" She shifted in the water, draping her arms around the edge and drawing attention to her slightly buoyant bust. Her mind thrummed with affectionate challenge.

"We don't have enough minions to keep the Kabuki moron out of our stuff," I explained, shrugging my clothes off with telekinesis and sinking into the bath with her, placing my head in the crook of her elbow.

"Ah, that would be a problem," she nodded slightly, not wanted to move from the comfortable position she'd found. "Can't we just go kill him?"

"Not yet," I chuckled, "I don't want to shoot him in the head and find out he's got a ten megaton nuke underneath his big phallic tower in the middle of my city." I poked her in the ribs, making her pout.

"Oh, you think his tower is compensating?" she chuckled.

"If you ignore the fact that he needs to house his company somewhere, well, there's only so many reasons he could need a big, tall, tower right in the middle of the city where everyone can see it," I played along, but brought our conversation back to my more serious topic. "Really, though, I don't want us to pick up more men at the moment, when we're still trying to secure the loyalty of the ones we already have, but that's the only way that I can see us having enough bodies to plug the gaps in our patrols."

"Can't you just… I don't know, magic up an invisible wall that only works on MBI morons?" Karasuba gestured with her arms vaguely. I froze. A few seconds later, she nudged me, and I started breathing again.

"Goddammit I'm an idiot," I turned around and started smacking my head on the tile around the edge of the bath. It was hard enough for the tile to fracture. Kara snickered. "I got into the habit of never placing myself in the equation when thinking about our little cold war with MBI," I sighed, "and I completely forgot the fact that I have Hero units to put to use. On top of that, we could make wards around our stuff, enchantments on buildings, and all sorts of shit that would make it _literally impossible_ for the Mad Idiot to even think about trying to get our property back into his hands."

"You mean you can make invisible walls that only keep out certain people?" Karasuba asked me, amused.

"Oh, baby I can do so much better than that," I sighed, "problem is, as far as I know none of us know how to do anything like enchanting or warding, and I don't want to waste time figuring it out when at any moment Minaka could be sneaking in the Disciplinary Squad to slaughter my men, my _soldiers_ , _MY PEOPLE_." I snarled the last bit, and then collected myself, "it's time for a new breed of prey to grace my diet. I've never tasted a real wizard before."

"You know where they are?" Karasuba's eyes lit up. She loved combat, _breathed_ combat, and loved to find new things to fight and kill. The more unlike her previous fights the better, because it made the experience so much more interesting. Neither of us had any idea how formidable a real, trained wizard would be, so the both of us were… excited… at the prospect of going up against one.

"No," I shook my head in the negative, "but, considering what we were just talking about, I know how to find them."

"Warding and enchanting?" she said out loud, tasting the words as if she could get what I was hinting at if she enunciated the phrase just right.

"Time to go bug Matsu again," I smiled, Karasuba snickered. She still found Matsu's terror towards her hilariously ironic, considering Matsu's own body count. We stood up, and stepped out of the bath. My telekinesis sent the water off of us in neat streams back into the bath, and our clothes floated up to place themselves around us perfectly.

"You're getting good at this, should I be concerned you're getting too much practice dressing and undressing me?" Kara placed a hand over her mouth, acting bashful.

"Yes, you should be terrified that I'm corrupting you by having my wicked way with you all the time," I deadpanned.

"If only," she sighed, sounding impatient, her hand falling to her side as she sulked. I laid down the law on a few things between us, and one of them was that I was going to wait a while before indulging in… intimacy. I know that virgin sacrifices were involved in the creation of Rc cells so I had to assume that chastity had an effect on magical development, or something along those lines. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't losing an opportunity by being short-sighted and blindly going along with my urges.

That was one thing I found out about Seikirei, their libido seemed to be beyond anything you'd imagine. Maybe it was just Karasuba and Matsu, but… damn, they're a couple of _eager_ girls. I mean they only go after their spouse, which is fairly chaste, but once they're bonded… Of course, our empathic bond didn't help the situation either, as it created a sort of feedback loop, getting me caught up in the whole thing.

Anyways, the hallways of our hotel had been redone a handful of days before, and were spotlessly clean. The walls were black marble, with brass accents, the ceiling was smoky quartz, which Hinami duplicated until we had enough for the whole building. The lights were above the quartz, which diffused the light and gave the hallway an even glow that didn't cast shadows. The floors were either pale granite tiles, or thick, blood red carpet with stylized Kakugan in key places. If you imagine a hallway that _looked_ expensive, and yet still didn't have all of the overstated decorations everywhere that haunt normal buildings of such prestige, then you've got what it looks like. It was luxurious, but it didn't have statues, paintings, and carvings everywhere to shove affluence in your face when you walked through it. It didn't have to act like a hyper-expensive place to still look like one, and I felt that the same kind of calm, steady confidence characterized Carneval's spirit perfectly. We didn't need to shout to the world how powerful we were. We knew, and our enemies would know, and that was all that mattered.

I also made sure that the lights were never on too high, so that when anyone went outside during the night they wouldn't be blinded by the darkness. The fact that the black marble looked even better in low lightning didn't even occur to me, I assure you.

Matsu's room in our penthouse was personally refitted by our hell-of-a-housekeeper Hinami and her little team of trained maids. Her walls were oak stained a dark, mellow color, so that Matsu could mount all of the electronics she wanted on her walls. It had the same lighting system as the rest of the building, but her room had the light turned significantly higher to minimize eye strain from all the screens around her. Further, she had a ladder system that let her climb up to do maintenance or switch out any of the parts of the technology lining her walls. It was the biggest, most glorious nerd cave I've ever seen, and I was suitably jealous. Of course, I could have one of my own if I wanted one, so I didn't _really_ feel jealous… it's a strange feeling being rich and seeing other rich people do rich things.

But the best part? Matsu paid for it on her own initiative. She didn't even have to be told to fake more money to pay for it all, in fact the whole room was her idea. She committed a severe crime of her own volition. We were steadily cutting away the brainwashing that Miya had shoved down her throat.

Weren't we such a good influence?

"Hey, Matsu-tan, I've got work for you if you're interested," I called as I kicked the door open. Over by a large, large collection of keyboards, Matsu jumped a foot in the air in shock. She turned and glared at me, something she wouldn't have had the confidence to do not long before.

"What do you want?" she groaned dramatically, flopping down on the floor of her room.

It was one, gigantic mattress from wall to wall. _With 2d body pillow drawings of Nishiki on the sheets_. To this day I have no idea how she managed that, and to be completely honest, I'm not sure I want to know.

I shivered.

"So you know how you're pretty much erasing our presence from any kind of electronic surveillance?" I ignored the squishy Nishiki under my feet as I balanced on the mattress-floor.

"Yeah," Matsu's eyes narrowed in confusion, wondering where I was going with the question.

"I'd like you to see if you can find any other places in the world that are being hidden like that, I'm officially going to start looking for the magical side of the world," I told her, making her eyes widen.

"Right," she turned to her keyboards and started typing furiously, as her eyes went out of focus. "To tell you the truth," she explained, her voice dropping into her "serious" tone, "not long after I was winged and moved in with you guys, I started looking for areas like that. I know that there's at least two more Brain-type Seikirei, and I wasn't going to let my Ashikabi get blindsided because of one of them. I wrote a program to find places under stealth technology and similar things, and after it finished with Shinto Teito I let it check the rest of the world as well." The screens flashed and suddenly snapped to show a large 3d rendition of the entire planet spread over several screens. It was primarily white, but it had red dots and patches in places. "There's three places in Shinto Teito that appear to have a Brain-type hiding them, but there's also a huge number of places that no surveillance equipment can focus on. The biggest are in Tibet, the Sahara, and Greenland. However, the most dense cluster is in Britain." She pointed to three large patches in the center of Asia, Africa, and the big island just east of Canada. Then, she pointed to Britain, which looked like it had the worst case of the chicken pox in existence, it was so covered in red dots.

"So you think that they magicals are hiding there?" I guessed. Karasuba looked over the map, approval emanating from her side of our bond, along with a bit of nostalgia. I guess she was reminiscing about the time she and Matsu worked together in the Disciplinary Squad.

"That's my best guess," Matsu nodded, "They stealth system operates differently from a Brain-type Seikirei. We run a program that deletes all data related to our position, whether it be sattelite images, thermal scans, or anything else. These places outside of Japan all are on paper maps and official measurements, but simply _never show up on the scans_. The data is never deleted because it never existed in the first place. If I didn't measure the area in square meters that each country should've had and compared it to satellite imaging, I'd have never noticed."

"That does sound like magic," I mused. "Something like a ward that prevents the space inside from showing up on any kind of artificial sight?" I guessed out loud, "no… that would depend on the level of technological development that the magical world had, and I have my doubts about that. Probably something more like a ward that stops the area without from showing up on any kind of map."

"You think they're non-technological?" Matsu cocked her head in confusion, wondering about my reasoning.

"Matsu, you've never felt the laziness that comes with being able to use magic," I laughed, but not in an insulting way, "Matsu you've seen how I can use telekinesis for all kinds of mundane tasks, right?" Matsu nodded, thinking about how I used my magic to pour drinks, and handle my clothes, and things like that. "Imagine if a society could do that all the time. They'd never have a reason to learn to do something a new or better way, because _they already have an easy way to do everything_. Why learn to make planes fly when you can just whip out your magic carpet and soar into the clouds. Why learn to use complicated technology like phones and computers to exchange data when you can just teleport hard copies to the destination with a little bit of effort."

"Now," I backtracked, "I'm not going to assume that they are that lazy, but I consider it to be the most probable situation. For all we know instead of developing technology through science they've got hyper-advanced gadgets that run on enchantments instead of electricity. I'm going to wait until I've eaten a grown wizard before making any solid conclusions, but I'm going to make a plan A based on my guess that their motivation to innovate is… stagnant."

"Hmm," she sighed, thinking it over, before she chuckled and made eye contact, nodding in agreement. "That does make a lot of sense."

"You should've never doubted me," I snarked, puffing up my chest. Unfortunately she was still taller than me. By a full eight inches. Seikirei were all tall, shapely bombshells, and I was small for my age. She patted me on the head patronizingly, and went back to her computers, her eyes unfocused as she directly fed information to her mind, ignoring the glowing screens completely.

"I'm really starting to hate being just a kid…" I grumbled, turning and sulking out of the room. "I've got centuries of memories in my head, many of which were very intelligent and important people, and yet I still get no respect. At all. Not even from someone that was afraid to speak out of turn in my presence when she first met me. Kara gave me a crooked, lopsided grin.

"Feeling _frustrated_? What's it like being on the other end of things?" she teased.

"You really want me being frustrated by Matsu?" I raised an eyebrow, as I plodded along towards the elevator.

"Hmm, touche," she responded lightly, patting me on the head. My eyes shifted, sclerae turning black and the veins glowing a demonic purple. My hand snapped up and grabbed her wrist, and the next the she knew we were in our sparring arena in our old base with my lunging for her with IXA.

So, of course, she parried and countered with a perfect slice that removed my right arm.

I ignored the momentary flash of pain as my arm was separated from my body for a brief moment, and lunged with a lightning-fast fencing lunge. She bent at the waist, moving her abdomen just far enough to dodge. She bent like a dancer, her balance flawless and her knees and back straight. She could've made a more… conventional dodge, but she was _Karasuba_ , and she was _flirting_. So she was showing off. I continued forward, baring my teeth and going for a chomp on her neck. She whipped her head forward and smashed her skull into mine, snapping my neck instantaneously. She followed by cleaving me in two across my gut. I grunted as my body snapped back into perfect condition, whipping IXA back in a broad kenjutsu slash. Kara slipped under it by bending at the hips again, and punched at my solar plexus, a blow that would kill a lesser man.

I let her fist pass through my organs, and I roared, stabbing at her with my Quinque and clenching my abdominal muscles to hold her arm in place. She executed a judo throw, hurling me off of her arm fast enough to break through the sound barrier. I slammed through the wall of our building, smashing an opening eight feet wide. The hole in my gut sealed, but I still felt angry. I growled, a sound that sounded… somewhat human.

Kara shot through the hole and grabbed me by the neck, rushing me back inside our sparring area. She swung her blade, and I tossed mine aside, my Kagune springing from my back in all of its glory to swat aside her weapon with a few Rinkaku working together. Tears started falling from my eyes, and Kara's eyes widened as my conscious thought vanished. I screamed, charging at her at a blurring speed that encroached on the raw physical might of a single-number Seikirei. She gripped her Quinque, taking a real swordsman's stance for the first time since the beginning of the fight. She whipped her Quinque through the air so fast that the blade vibrated against the air molecules, producing a haunting ringing noise with each swing. I was completely subsumed by madness, weeping openly as I threw myself at her as a mindless, rabid, monster. She wove a melody with her "singing" sword, parrying my Rinkaku, deflecting my Ukaku, and outmatching my physical strength when I attacked with my normal limbs. I fell completely into ghoul bloodlust, but even then in that "perfect combat state," she was invincible. It was glorious to behold.

And it was humiliating.

After one, last, final stab through my heart, I slumped, my Kagune drooping limply from my back. I fell forward, leaning into Karasuba. She blinked, not understanding, her hand still holding the handle of the blade through my chest. Awkwardly, she let go of her sword, and placed her arms around me. A wet spot from my tears quickly soaked into her shirt.

"What's wrong?" she managed. I flinched, and then wrapped every limb available, sending us tumbling to the ground in a heap as her legs were locked together by my Rinkaku limbs as we were completely encased in my Kagune, save for our heads and shoulders. She helplessly held onto me as I cried into her chest. Finally, I spoke up.

"You know, being a Chimaera ghoul, I've always had a fundamental advantage over any other ghoul in existence," I started, keeping my face tucked up against her warmth and away from meeting her gaze. I could feel the concern through our bond, but more than that I could feel her fear. She wasn't afraid of me, she was scared because she had no idea what was going wrong with me.

"Then, I found out I could use magic, and I had one more advantage over everyone else. I was a young God. I was invincible. Even in the fights that I lost I walked away without a scratch," I continued, my voice cracking as I trembled weakly. "I was happy. I was free. Nothing could stand above me and shove me back down into a hole in the ground again, I couldn't be put back in Kanou's lab. And then.. And then he caught me again. But I became a Kakuja, and again I was the most powerful combatant for miles in any direction." I squeezed her tighter. "I think it was then that I started realizing that I was broken, on some sort of basic level. I was more powerful than anyone I'd heard of, and yet I was terrified of my friends growing as powerful as I was. I didn't let anyone else have magic until I met you and started learning real fighting skills, because I was afraid that they would be stronger than me, and that they'd leave and Kanou would…" Karasuba squeezed me back, burying her nose in my hair. She smelled like blood. So did I.

"I grew up in a cage, my only connection to the outside world being a God-like figure that had absolute power over me, and chose to use that power to torture me endlessly. I guess I was just playing around at being normal…" I sniffed. "I have an obsessive need to be the most powerful. It's so strong that sometimes, I even hate you for being more powerful than me. At any moment, I can literally feel how much you unconditionally love me, and yet I envy and fear you because you're better at killing than me. I thought that I could satisfy myself by getting minions, money, and that kind of power, but even then I'm still just a kid to them, I'm not something that they fear. I don't want to live my life alone with nobody near me that isn't terrified of me, but whenever someone shows any kind of relaxed manner around me it terrifies me like you wouldn't believe. It doesn't make any sense, but it _hurts_ , and it won't stop."

"I know," Karasuba whispered so quiet I almost couldn't hear her. I stopped speaking, burying my face closer to her. "I've spent hours just exploring your mind. I know it's rude and obsessive, but I've gone through your memories multiple times, just experiencing the world through your eyes. No matter how many times I watch each memory, I still enjoy witnessing my Ashikabi's presence. You may not be able to see it, but… there's a massive rift through your mind, like a piece of it was carved out. It's a dark, evil hole that warps and twists everything around it. I know, you _are_ broken, but you're _MINE_ ," she snarled, and I was shocked at her vehemence, even though I could feel her emotions. "You are literally everything to me. My purpose in life, my only source of joy and love. When you're afraid, come to me. Our souls are linked, and I will _ALWAYS_ be here."

I cried. Because at the end of the day, no matter how much I didn't want to admit it, I was still the same child stuck in a cage.

XXXXXXX

"We're making a trip to the UK," I said, my face perfectly calm, no trace of any emotional turmoil present in the slightest. I was sitting on one of our couches in our penthouse, Kara lounging next to me so that she was just close enough for me to feel her body heat against my leg. "I'm gonna go find a few magicals and eat them so that I can ward the shit out of our stuff."

"Okay," Nishiki shrugged. Touka and Ayato simply nodded. Kankei smiled, and nodded, and Hinami nodded proudly, still happy to be included. She was looking… professional. She had on a pair of black silk dress pants with a matching vest, a white silk dress shirt, and every button on pants, vest, and shirt were gleaming silver. She had a pocketwatch in her vest pocket, and she had a blood red bowtie fastened around her neck. A short black apron and shiny black dress shoes completed her outfit, save for her white silk gloves. She looked the image of a butler. An unfairly adorable butler, but a butler in any case.

"I'll be back in a few weeks, maybe earlier. It depends on how long it takes to find someone with the knowledge we need," I assured, them. "Besides, we need someone to have gone there so we can just teleport the next time."

"Try and get a healer too," Kaneki spoke up, "we ghouls can regenerate, but our Clowns can't and they've already lost a few men in small gunfights."

"Good idea," I nodded, "yeah, I'll go looking for a hospital, every country has to have at least one."

"Are you sure you want to head there alone?" Touka raised an eyebrow.

"I need some alone time," I shrugged, "Kara's coming with me because it doesn't make much difference how far away she is, we're always within easy reach of the other."

"Well, just don't be gone too long, you and Karasuba are our biggest attack dogs," Ayato sighed, "Matsu should be able to mask your departure, but Minaka will want to test us at some point, we're a threat to his influence."

"I'll be back," I assured him, "come on," I took Kara's hand and tugged her along with me, not looking back at the others as I led her into our room. Karasuba was taller than Matsu, so when I held her hand I had to lift my arm up high like a kid pulling their mother around at a zoo. Kara let go of my hand and bonked me on the head with a loose fist, cutting off my train of thought. She sent affection across our bond, and I returned it, letting my thoughts ease into her presence in the back of my mind.

If I didn't have her I'd probably be a mindless rampaging killer by now.

We entered into our room where everything we needed was already packed. I had a backpack with toiletries, and both of us had a wallet with debit cards and cash. We didn't need anything else.

Karasuba had not one, not two, but three different swords belted at her left hip, and her quinque case was in her hand, but that wasn't luggage, they were personals. I took her hand, and one teleport later we were at the docks, at the edge of the water. Kara put down all of her things, and I took off my backpack. A brief moment later, and my Kakuja swallowed all of our luggage, including Kara's Quinque, much to her annoyance. I eased myself into the water, and Karasuba nimbly stepped on top of me, and then sat down between my shoulders, a bit behind where the back of my crest of horns ended in a pair of sharp points. She grabbed them like the handlebars of a motorcycle, though she was cross legged on top of my powerfully muscled upper back. My long, somewhat flat tail snaked back and forth, and we moved out into the water at a respectable pace.

We continued like that for a while, until we were both sure that we were out of sight of the coast. We communicated telepathically through our bond. I could've ejected my humanoid body to speak with her, but in a moment I was going to need my magic anyway, and deep down inside I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being the massive killing machine we call a Kakuja.

When neither of us could see the shoreline, I reached out with my telekinesis and grabbed a hold of a raindrop-shaped space around us, holding the molecules at the edges in place and forming a perfectly aerodynamic shell. I lifted it, and our impromptu airship rose upwards, until we were above the clouds. Karasuba didn't have any trouble breathing, as I held the atmospheric pressure stable as we rose. Then, I turned our raindrop to the west, and we shot forward at a comfortable cruising speed, pretty much the best I could handle while sustaining so much simultaneously. My freakish multitasking abilities strike again.

It wasn't incredibly fast, only about the speed of a car on a highway, but we were in the air and could travel in a straight line without stopping. Once a day I used telekinesis to recycle her cellular waste and dead cells into usable materials for her body, in essence feeding her with what her body was throwing away and wasting. If I did it constantly she wouldn't even need to breathe, because the carbon dioxide in her blood would be recycled into fresh oxygen.

Kanou's medical knowledge is doing a lot more good in my hands than anyone could've guessed.

We spent nearly a week just moving westward in a straight line. It was the longest time that I'd ever tried multitasking like that for an extended period, and it was the first time that I used telekinesis on a large scale. By the end of things I was in the habit of sensing the molecules around me, and I could move us at double the speed of a car on a highway, because my skill with telekinesis had consolidated by the trial I'd put it through. It wasn't as fast as I eventually wanted to be able to move, but it was still twice my previous comfortable limit.

If I pushed it I could probably break 200 miles per hour, but it's hard to measure linear speed when you're several thousand feet in the air.

However, at the end of things we reached London, luckily during the night, and it was a simple matter of dropping into the river Thames with a Hypnosis field around us to sneak into the populace. Two people joined the crowds of London, a child with a backpack and a strange black leather coat, accompanied by a stunningly beautiful woman with ash-grey hair and _three_ swords at her hip. I walked along the streets, looking for signs of supernatural interference.

It was trickier than you'd think. Even if you knew where to look, finding one building or one street out of an entire city was _hard_.

Karasuba breathed in the air, eyeing the people around us with dismissive half-interest. It was the first time she'd been out of Japan, but the humans were all weak insects beneath her gaze, nothing worth her time. It was technically the first time I'd been out of the country, but I had memories from a few trips outside of Japan, and one CCG investigator had actually been an immigrant from France.

"I'm hungry," Kara declared, and she grabbed me by the upper arm. She tugged me into a restaurant at the corner. Inside, the waitress eye Kara's swords with a skeptical gaze, like she wasn't sure whether to be scared of someone with that many swords.

Yes, you should be scared. Run far, far away you idiot human.

Kara snickered, asking for a table for two, and unbuckling her swords from her waist. Taking her actions as an indication that Kara wasn't about to start going stab happy, the waitress led us to a table where Kara slung her swords across the backrest. It was a high table with a chair on either side. My feet couldn't reach the floor. Kara ordered Fish N Chips, the famous English meal, and I ordered a steak, served as raw as they'd let the cooks leave it. Kara and I chatted about where the magicals might be telepathically as we waited for our food.

Karasuba was sure that there were going to be magical places around government buildings. I thought it made a lot of sense, but magicals probably stayed in the same places for centuries, and so their locations were probably a bit more random.

' _Good point',_ Kara sighed, ' _you'd think they'd put a damn sign up for people to read, MAGIC PEOPLE THROUGH HERE.'_

' _They might have and just kept it hidden from… people like us,'_ I shrugged, thinking about the fact that neither of us were biologically human.

' _That would be annoying,'_ Kara scowled, ' _Can't you sense where magic is or something like that?'_

' _Not very far,'_ I pursed my lips in thought, shifting in my seat, ' _I can sense everything within a normal city block, any farther and concentrations of power start to blend into ambient magic and are pretty much impossible to distinguish from a rock or a tree. My range has been getting bigger, maybe an inch a day or so, but it's not that big for now, and that doesn't help us right now.'_

"Here is your meal," a waitress placed our food in front of us, unnerved by the way Kara and I had just been "staring" at each other with our expressions changing every few seconds.

"Thanks," I nodded absently, biting into the bloody steak she'd set in front of me. It was decent. My taste buds were still adjusting to human food, but because the steak was mostly raw and pink it tasted fine to me. It's not like I was going to get sick from eating undercooked meat.

' _So… any ideas?'_ I asked her. It was originally her idea to come here, after all, and she was good at bouncing ideas for me and coming up with out-of-the-box plans. It helped that we perfectly understood each other at all times.

' _We could start killing people with magic and wait for the wizard cops to show,'_ she offered.

Right, psychotic killer. Gotta remember that.

' _I like the idea of using a bunch of magic to lure in a meal, but I don't know about killing people. I don't want to make waves in a magical community yet, they've got too many supernatural advantages against us right now,'_ I thought the matter over. ' _I'll go find an alley and start pumping out power. You keep an eye out and lure someone away from the group. I'll swoop in and have a dine-and-dash, and we'll be home free.'_

' _Sounds fine to me,'_ she went along with my plan, fine with it as long as she got to see something killed.

I chuckled, pausing in eating my meal to let myself laugh without spitting meat all over my dinner date. After we were finished eating, I paid with my debit card (you should've seen everyone's faces when Karasuba started flirting with me about who was paying) and we left the restaurant. We were in downtown London, so we had a nice, big selection of alleys to choose from. I found one that turned twice so that nothing that happened in the alley would be visible from the street. Kara jumped four stories up to the roof of the buildings to the side with the same amount of effort humans use to stand up from a chair. I leaned against the wall of the alley, pulling the hood of my hoodie closer around me. I had my ghoul leather jacket over my hoodie, and I looked like a proper drunk idiot crumpled against the side of the alley. I threw a bit of trash over myself with telekinesis to help the act, just for fun. I'd be cleaning myself with scouring magic afterward, though. I breathed in, and out, and then started pushing magic out of my body like I was sweating it.

The alley was filled with my power, and if you looked _really really_ closely, you could see that everything had gained a deep, dark purple sheen, like you were wearing colored glasses. Soon enough, a pair of men in red wizard robes walked into the alley, wands in their hands. They had badges on their left breast, so they were probably cops of some kind. I didn't give them a chance, Karasuba dropping from the roof to stab one man in the lung, and I used all of my mental might to Hypnotize the other into falling asleep. Kara's wizard tried to turn his wand to fire a spell at her, but she punched him in the shoulder, pulverizing the bones in the area. He would've screamed, but his lungs were filling with blood and he could only quietly gurgle.

"Shhhh," Kara crooned with a smile that was almost motherly, holding the man in her arms as he died.

"Thanks," I hugged her for a moment as she dropped the body on the stone pavement. I turned to the corpse. A twitch of my magic had him floating up towards me. "You know what?" I turned to Kara, "I think a little misdirection is in order." I used telekinesis to bore four holes into his neck, like he'd been bitten by a vampire.

"... I don't know if that's clever or not," she eyed my handiwork thoughtfully.

"Hey," I shrugged, "me neither, but whatever helps, I guess." I again, used my infinitely useful telekinesis to drain the blood from his body into my mouth, as I gulped it down in large, greedy mouthfuls.

The man barely had any Rc cells in him. I don't know if it was because of his magic or because we were on the far side of the planet, but he had a tenth of the average Rc cells that humans had in Japan. It was still enough. The life of the Auror Jacob Jeho'Maly, a celtic man who joined the British Auror force to survive washed into my mind, his memories and knowledge filtering into their prepared places where my knowledge was lacking.

It was useful information, mostly, but also incredibly disappointing.

"Fuck," Kara cursed, looking through the memories herself through our link. These wizards were barely more dangerous than normal humans from our point of view. The biggest difficulty would be finding them and getting through their shields, and with our Quinque and Kagune we could cut through any non-physical defense with impunity, and cleave right through many physical ones as well. Well, I guess Kara and I were going to have to put up with eventually being the most powerful beings in existence.

 _I WOULD NOT BE ANYTHING LESS_.

"And he didn't even know a fucking thing about wards," Kara complained, kicking the Hypnotized Auror where he slept in revenge for his partner's incompetence.

"Yeah," I smirked, "but he knew where to find someone who does."

XXXXXXX

 **100K words!**

 **Parties occur around the world as I join the ranks of the official "no longer a writing newb" people. So yeah, pop a review or something please because now that's going to be the only way for this to reach more readers. Going up on the rankings, that is.**

 **And on the other hand the much anticipated "return" to the wizarding world begins. What's going on there? What year is it in relation to cannon? Who's alive? Who's dead? Pretty much all of these questions will have at least a partial answer in the next 1-2 chapters.**

 **And I'm going to admit it right now, telekinesis is fucking overpowered as shit. If anyone doesn't like my MC being able to say "fuck this I'm killing you instantly by crushing your organs with my** _ **mind**_ **," then give me a flame or something. Of course he's not going to just walk right over everybody, there's going to be conflict and weaknesses and real fights and stuff, but telekinesis is obnoxiously powerful by nature, and I chose to give it to Harry in this fic.**

 **See you guys next week!**


	19. Chapter 17: Obligatory Bank Heist

**Chapter 17: Obligatory Bank Heist**

The Ministry of Magic was a twisted, blind, self-satisfied, prejudiced, stagnant place. It was filled with people who only held their positions because their family "always has," or because the public voted for said people because their gold bought a proper propaganda campaign. However, if you wanted to do aything legally in magical Britain, you had to jump through the Ministry's bureaucratic hoops and hope that some rich moron didn't decide to ruin your life for the fun of it.

But neither Kara nor I gave a shit about doing things "legally."

We walked into Diagon Alley, a center of commerce and industry, as much as anything in the British Wizarding World could be called "industry." There was one place in particular that we were headed for, Gringotts Bank. Gringotts was the premier place in the entire magical world to store all of your many valuables, and Gringotts was also the biggest name in both warding, and ward-breaking. Their experts could outshine the masters of the outside world, because Gringotts was almost completely staffed by goblins, who guard their few magical secrets with their lives.

But that couldn't stop me.

We walked into the big marble building with our heads held high. Diagon alley was filled with robes-wearing wizards, witches, and their children. Virtually everyone was staring at me or Karasuba for various reasons. We were wearing Muggle clothing, so that was one thing for the wizards to stare at. Second, Karasuba was a very attractive woman wearing flattering Muggle clothing in a location where society keeps women wearing _loose robes._ The guards eyed the weaponry on Karasuba's hip, but didn't stop us. They probably thought that a "human" wouldn't be a threat to them with nothing but a sword. I sniffed the air, making sure that I smelled Rc cells in the goblins, so that the trip wouldn't be for nothing. I smelled the scent of magical flesh in the air, so that even if the Rc cell concentration was as low as the Auror I'd just eaten, I would still get memories from my meal. We walked right past the line in front of the main desk, and then I cleared my throat. Some blonde-haired floozy was there with his son and wife, all of them with silvery bleached hair. I ignored him.

"Good morning," I smirked at the goblin, "recently my investments in Muggle businesses have paid off, and I need to open a new high-security vault to store five hundred thousand galleons worth of precious metals and other materials." The crowd, which had been staring at me like the scum on their shoes, collectively did a double take, their minds barely comprehending the use of "five hundred thousand galleons," "Muggle," and "Young underage boy" in the same situation. The goblin looked… greedy.

"Follow my assistant here, he will take you to a private room to discuss the specifics," the goblin instructed me imperiously, but I saw his fingers tremble slightly.

The goblins were misers of the highest degree. If you threw a penny in between them they literally would fight to the death over it. They knew exactly how much gold was worth, and they knew that I was telling them that I was going to deposit several million US dollars' worth in Muggle investments. That was enough to get their attention, and it was a big enough number that they were willing to risk that I was lying and waste a bit of time on me. The fact that I had an "armed guard" in the form of Karasuba was another thing to my advantage, because it made me look like a helpless young heir. The goblins had no idea who I was, but everything they could see indicated that I _could_ be telling the truth. I followed the assistant down the bank's hallways, and into a back room. Inside, we were asked to wait. A few minutes after that, and an official looking goblin came in and sat at the room's desk, us across from him.

"I understand that you wish to open a new high-security account," the goblin confirmed, enunciating every syllable aggressively, like he was beating the words into submission as he spoke.

"Yes," I nodded. He was about to say something else, but I waved him off, "I already know the procedure, I just want to see the goblin who's laying the wards for my vault face-to-face. It's a family rule that we can't make a business deal unless we can look the other party in the eye." The goblin looked like he was partly impressed that a "rich wizard family" had somewhat reasonable business sense and partly irritated that they (read: he) had to break monotony for my sake. I sat in the room patiently, reclining back in the plush chair in the lavish office. Kara stood just close enough behind me that the hilt of her sword could brush against the hair on the back of my head.

' _This is boring,'_ Kara whined.

' _They hate people who aren't goblins,'_ I shrugged, ' _They're probably making us wait on purpose. Come to think of it, they hate people who_ are _goblins too.'_

' _Aren't they supposed to be some kind of warrior race?'_ Kara wondered, running her eyes over the decorations in the room, which were a collection of metal weapons and armor pieces, accented with jewelry and similar shows of wealth.

' _Maybe to the Wizards'_ I laughed in my head, ' _An Auror can kill about three in direct combat, and goblins are barely more powerful physically than a baseline human. Their magic is virtually all directed towards finding and manipulating precious materials, so unless they've got a spear made out of solid gold they're really no trouble to kill.'_ Kara scowled.

' _What's it going to take to get a good fight out of this world? A Dragon?'_ she sighed.

' _Why not?'_ I chuckled out loud, drawing a strange look from the goblin behind the desk. ' _There's a Dragon preserve in Romania and Tibet, we could make a trip there sometime. Once we've warded our territory I'll feel confident that we can go on a full assault on Minaka. Once he's dead, Carneval can take over Shinto Teito completely, and we'll need to start expanding to greater borders. I'm renaming it Tokyo, screw MBI's idiocy. Anyway, Tokyo will most likely form our home base type deal. Sovereign territory is hard to come by, and we've already got a primitive infrastructure going on. However, if we want to keep expanding we're going to need to figure out ways to transport large amounts of our non-magical minions in a short amount of time. Carneval's forces will have to become mobile. Or at least us Ringmasters will need to. Tibet might be a nice place for a private mansion. Magic could keep it warm, and the Dragons' preserve covers most of the mountain range, so we could go have a fight with them in our backyard if we felt like it. '_

' _I'll hold you to that,'_ she said seriously, ' _don't you stand me up now.'_

' _Yes, years from now we'll be telling our children about how I stood you up on a romantic date composed of life and death struggles against vicious beasts deep in the wild,'_ I snarked sarcastically.

' _...Children?'_ Kara raised an eyebrow, slightly hesitant. She was shocked for several reasons, not the least of which was that she was realizing that she did, in fact, have a legitimate chance of becoming a mother some time in the future. Before I showed up in her life, she'd been a rampant serial killer that had no one in her life that she could've even considered sleeping in the same bed with, much less have children with. Somewhere deep, deep down inside I laughed manically as I pictured Miya's face as she saw a bunch of mini-Karasubas running around with steak knives calling her "aunty Miya."

' _...maybe someday'_ I sighed in response, realizing that our light-hearted banter had gotten me a little too excited.

We were brought out of our thoughts by the sound of a goblin clearing his throat. In unison, my eyes and Kara's snapped to the goblin behind the counter. He hesitated, seeing some tiny hint of danger in our identical even stares.

"The warding master is here," the goblin explained, and he tapped a button on his desk. Half a second later, the door opened and a new goblin walked inside. This goblin wasn't wearing a suit like the others, he was wearing robes not unlike the wizards outside the bank, though his had writing in Gobbledegook all over it to announce his status to the world. The writing was stitched with gold thread., the rich bastard. No I'm not a hypocrite, hush.

Karasuba readied herself mentally, poised and ready in the back of my mind like a predator cat about to pounce. I swung my eyes around and made eye contact with the goblin behind the desk. The moment my purple gaze met his beady little eyes my mind leapt across the distance between us and slammed into his with the weight of the world behind it. His weak, tattered, mind, withered from his petty obsession over wealth and envy of wizards, gave way for my mind like a Smart Car hit by a truck. I whipped my head around and made eye contact with the newcomer, and used the same mental domination spell, but this time Karasuba lept "forward" and bore the brunt of the strain that it took to force his mind into submission. The result left the two of us tired as hell, but neither of us truly exhausted. Kara quickly slashed the ward-master with her sword in a draw-strike, and then held the blade up for me. I raised an eyebrow at her, and took the bloodstained sword, running my tongue along the red patch where the goblin blood had stuck to the edge. It was only a steel sword, so it couldn't cut my tongue.

I breathed in and out as another lifetime was subsumed into my vast archive of experiences.

"Got it," I managed, not taking the memory rush well right after dominating a pair of minds. I vanished the blood off of Kara's sword as I handed it back to her, and then withdrew slowly from the goblins' minds, keeping them from remembering anything from the past few seconds. Kara and I were still in the same places, me sitting and her standing behind me, so they didn't suspect anything even as my hold over their minds faded. Once my mind was fully retracted, I turned to the goblin behind the desk.

"This is your expert?" I asked, looking somewhat interested, as if we hadn't just pulled off a kind-of-a-heist in the "safest place in magical Britain." I ran my eyes over the Goblin's robes analytically, as if I was searching for an indication that the Goblin was mistake-prone or something similar that would discourage me from entrusting my large pile of money to the greedy race of bankers.

"He's been our high-security wardmaster for the past two decades," was the response. Both goblins were stifling angered frowns at the doubt I was faking. Suddenly Kara lifted a hand to her right ear.

"Speaking," she intoned, as if she had an earbud connected to a phone in her ear. She did have an earbud, but it wasn't actually connected to anything, it was just for show. I turned to look at her, ignoring the two goblins. After a few seconds she looked at me. "Your father's been poisoned, we need to leave right now," she told me, flawlessly acting the bodyguard. I faked a tense expression, like I was worried by the knews.

"My apologies," I said to the goblins, "but it seems that I've wasted your time today. I'll try to return at the earliest moment I can."

"Oh," the goblins both visibly deflated while subtly scowling.

"I'll have you led out," we were informed.

"No, I know the way," I shook my head, and stood, Karasuba falling into step next to me as we went.

' _So… what did you get?'_ Kara asked me excitedly, like a child with a new toy.

' _You can't see it in my mind?'_ I wondered curiously.

' _If I really wanted to look I could,'_ she shrugged, ' _but new memories are always a bit fuzzy and disorganized until you've had a bit of sleep. It's a lot easier to just ask you.'_

' _Huh,'_ I puffed thoughtfully. ' _Well, the little shit knew a lot about wards and barriers, that I can say. I know how to get our stuff warded now. It'll take a bit of effort to shift their way of using magic to ours, though, Goblins used runic schemes and ritual blood sacrifices to create their wards. I'd do the same, but I don't feel like having to go through a long, complicated ritual every time we get new property. The wizard wasn't a real help either, they actually consider the way that we use magic to be impossible. Yes, our whole bodies are a collective magical focus, so we're not technically using wandless magic, but the continuous use of magical power like my telekinesis is supposed to be impossible. Not to mention that I shouldn't be able to apparate at all until after my second magical maturity at my 21st birthday.'_

' _So you're going to get Minaka off our asses with invisible walls,'_ she nodded, taking what she wanted to find out from the little rant I'd fallen into. I talked a lot sometimes, but Kara didn't mind it. ' _... little shit?'_

' _Bastard thought that just because he was a goblin and was oppressed by wizards that the world owes him anything and everything he wants,'_ I scowled, ' _I mean I get that he's got a real reason to be pissed, but there's a difference between righteous anger and holding a grudge. He was an entitled little shit, end of story.'_

' _Huh,'_ Kara blinked, surprised by how annoyed I was at the idiot goblin.

' _Anyways, let's just go home, if you want we can stop for ice cream but we've got more important things to do than waste time in the Land that Progress Forgot,'_ I groused. Karasuba laughed at my tone, but didn't oppose the ice cream idea.

We left Gringotts, one pissed little monster and one chuckling monster. The ice cream stop at Diagon Alley was Florean Fortescue's, a place where flavors like "wet cat" and "frog farts" were available on the normal menu. Why in the name of all that is holy they even _had_ flavors like that I had no clue. Publicity, maybe? They _were_ the only ice cream shop in magical Britain, though, so that idea could be scrapped…

We both got chocolate. The shop had a set of tables out in the open so you could eat your ice cream outside. We went to a table near the edge of the group. We ended up next to a family of three. The father was tall, with messy black hair and glasses. The wife had red hair and shockingly green eyes. Their son was tall, with messy black hair, and the same green eyes as his mother, and the same vision as hers because he didn't have glasses. I heard the boy telling his parents stories about his first year at Hogwarts. It was early summer, so he had to have gotten back from his first year at Hogwarts not long ago. I was the same age as the kid, my fourteenth birthday was some point in the recent months. I had picked the day that I'd become a Kakuja to celebrate my birthday, but I didn't actually know when it was. Kara got me a sport bike for my birthday, even if I was still too small to ride it, and Touka got me a pair of rock albums from the 70s, classic rock's heyday.

"There were a lot of people who thought Harry was going to show up," the boy told them, "some of the older 'Claws kept coming up to my and asking where we were locking him up, because the Boy-Who-Lived _obviously_ wouldn't miss Hogwarts." The boy sighed bitterly. Karasuba mentally asked who the Boy-Who-Lived was, and I responded in the same way. Harry Potter, vanquisher of the Dark Lord Voldemort, The-Boy-Who-Vanished. He disappeared some time after he "defeated" Voldemort, along with his Muggle relatives. Theories to his disappearance include Voldemort's followers kidnapping him to raise as their new Lord, and Merlin coming to take him to Avalon. I'll say it again, the wizards are _morons_.

"Dumbledore is working alchemy on the sample of his blood. We'll find him, I promise you," the mother said gently, smiling away her obvious grief. The Father smiled bitterly, not looking at his son.

"Your friends are writing you though, right?" the mother asked curiously, changing the subject.

"Yeah, Hermione, Ron, and Neville have all written already, they say they want to write once a week. We planned on meeting here in Diagon a few times during the summer, too," the boy nodded, forgetting about his grief in his childish excitement about having friends.

"That's wonderful," the mother smiled beatifically, her perfect white teeth drawing into a flawless smile. Karasuba was watching the family in silence with me, and I felt her shift in confusion at seeing the mother's expression.

' _What is it?'_ I asked.

' _Her smile looks… familiar,'_ Karasuba sent back thoughtfully. A breath later we both shrugged, chalking it up to a coincidence.

"Neville's been doing a lot better in class recently, except for potions," the boy continued. A regretfully bitter look flashed across the father's face, a grieved regretful one lingered on the mother's, and the boy's showed indignation. Now there was a story there.

"I still can't believe that…" the boy started to tear up. I was a bit annoyed. It sounded like the kid was about to blab some interesting gossip, but he went all "traumatized child" all of a sudden.

"Don't worry," the mother reached forward and embraced the boy without hesitation, the father following her example, "you're safe, we won't let anything get anywhere near you." The boy sniffed, his head hidden in his parents arms. It was a _disgusting_ show of familial love, and it was annoying me. I scooted my chair next to Kara's, and reached out with my arm to gently take hold of her chin. Then I started making out with her. _Loudly_. Her wings wouldn't show unless I channeled a bit of magic through our lips, so there wasn't anything obviously supernatural about our public display of affection.

The father of the little family finally noticed the noise a few seconds later, and looked to see what appeared to him to be an attractive armed woman forcefully kissing a 12-13 year old boy with her arms wrapped around his shoulders to keep him from getting away. His inner hero complex kicked in, and he stood up. He strode over to the enthusiastic couple and took the upper arm of the woman in a firm grip, forcing the two of them to stop. We turned to look at him, no emotion on our faces.

"Step away from the boy," he ordered Karasuba calmly, completely misunderstanding the situation. Around us, people started staring and whispering. It wasn't unexpected, the Potters were a famous family, and even an ice cream outing would probably be high-profile for them. Kara started chuckling.

"Hands off my lady, asshole," I said evenly, and took a shot with my fist. Now, I was sitting down, and I was already short for my age, so when my fist went at him it went at the softest target it could find.

I punched him in the nuts with enough force to drop him like a puppet with its strings cut.

Movies and things always say that when men get hit in the nuts they squeak or scream girlishly before falling to the ground. This is a lie. When a man really gets hit in a certain critical hit location, their whole body locks up in pain, including their lungs. They're having way too hard a time breathing to be able to squeak and scream like the movies say they do.

Anyways, the guy dropped to the ground, his whole body twitching as he cradled his injured boys, and his wife and son both gasped. I turned to them, ignoring the now _much_ louder whispering coming from the many other people in the shop.

"Don't put your hands on another man's woman, you'd think he'd know this already," I shrugged blithely. I could almost see smoke coming off of the woman and the boy's heads as their brains worked overtime to try and process what they'd just witnessed and heard. They were failing horribly. "Come on, there's obviously no privacy here," I took Kara's hand, hopping off my chair, and led her out of the shop. The fact that my head was just barely taller than her elbow made the whole thing even better. We made it far enough away that they couldn't hear us, and then in unison broke down into roaring laughter.

Wizards were so embarrassingly strict when it came to "shows of affection." Karasuba only looked like she was in her later teen years, anyways, so she didn't _quite_ seem like a paedophile kissing me. She used to look a bit older, but after bonding with me she started sleeping a lot better and the bags under her eyes went away along with a few other small signs of stress, making Kara look a handful of years younger. I may be small, but I did look older than my height would suggest, so I was really only mistaken for a child when the observer didn't see my face or wasn't really paying attention.

I took Kara's hand, and Apparated, as I now knew how our teleportation was called by the magical world, back to Carneval's headquarters in Shinto Teito. We reappeared in Matsu's room in the penthouse, and I was about to announce our arrival cheerfully when I saw that the room was scrambling with messengers and Diabolos apparating all over the place, with Matsu doling out orders to virtually anyone close by.

"Matsu, what's going on," I slid smoothly into a serious mood, my mind calming from my previous levity. I looked over the many monitors on the walls in concern, seeing live videos of a collection of masked Seikirei _slaughtering Carneval's ghouls._

"Zero!" Matsu yelled with audible relief. "We need you and Karasuba out there now! Minaka must've known you were gone! The moment you left, 24 undocumented Seikirei started to attack all of our legitimate locations, killing everything in sight!. They're fighting like weapon-types, but they can kill ghouls like they're normal humans. You guys need to get out there!"

"... Understood," my face tightened into an expression of focused rage. Deep inside, I felt not a small amount of worry. These 24 new Seikirei had to be just as skilled as Karasuba if they could slaughter ghouls like Matsu said, and both Karasuba and I were still recovering from the mental strain of forcefully dominating two minds. I wasn't in any condition to be using large amounts of magic, and I wouldn't be able to control my Kakuja and normal body simultaneously either. I was severely hamstringed, and Carneval was about to face its first real threat.

XXXXXXX

Carneval wasn't under siege. We weren't being invaded. We weren't in a fight with anyone. The new Seikirei that had shown up were efficiently shepherding our men into death. They all looked surprisingly like Karasuba, at least in terms of height and body type. They all had ebony-black hair, however, and wore featureless oni masks, so their full appearance was hidden. They all had MBI's Disciplinary Squad's uniforms on, and each had a katana. I apparated Kara and I out into the streets, with an earpiece in each of our ears for Matsu to keep in contact with us. Karasuba had her Tsunagi quinque case hanging from the back of her belt, and another Quinque in her hand, a savagely serrated Nodachi that fit her preferred style of combat perfectly. We hadn't had the chance to change, so we were both still wearing jeans and sneakers. However, I'd had Karasuba put on the single ghoul leather jacket that I'd been able to make. With it, she wouldn't be hurt on the torso by any weapon not made of Quinque steel. However, she cut off the sleeves so she had maximum flexibility and speed of movement in her shoulders.

I looked like a kid heading off to middle school, what with my short height, and casual clothes. My hair was fully grown back in, but Kara and Touka kept me from letting it get too long again. At least I didn't look like a recovering skinhead. IXA in my right hand did kill the image a bit, though. On a slightly unrelated note, I was planning on making my own Quinque not too long from then. IXA was a powerful weapon, but it was made for a human, and it's abilities weren't suited to my style of combat. IXA was a highly defensive Quinque, and with my regeneration I didn't need anything to strengthen my defense. Then, the grip didn't fit my hand properly, and blah, blah, blah, etc. It wasn't right for me. However, considering the circumstances, I was going to put it to use without complaint. I put too much work into Carneval, I definitely wasn't going to see it slaughtered and all my hard work going to waste.

We ran through the streets, ignoring the normal humans around us, rain pouring down onto the few people outside and soaking us all to the bone. The sky was a dark, uniform grey. The Seikirei attacking Carneval weren't even attempting to hide their actions, so most of the humans were running in terror from the brutal fights ringing the area around us. I was wondering to myself just what the fuck was Minaka up to. He was acting like a desperate man, sending everything he had at us without regard for keeping anything secret from the mundane side of the world. I mean he did own virtually the whole city, and he ruled it as sovereign territory like some kind of king, and could keep any and all information from leaking out of the city through any means he wanted to use, but this…. This was _excessive_ , for lack of a better word to use.

I mean it's not like the city didn't have internet access or anything. If some chump with a phone caught a fight on camera and posted it online, the CCG and who knows who else would come down on this city like angels of death. Minaka went to a lot of effort to keep Shinto Teito cut off from the surrounding country so the Seikirei Plan stayed a secret, but now all of a sudden he had thrown subtlety to the wind and was carrying out a full assault.

I hated not knowing _why_.

Our first contact with one of our new enemies came quickly. We both heard the sounds of slaughter long before we got there. The first thing I noticed about these new Seikirei, or at least this particular one, was that it had a strange symbol on its oni mask between its eyebrows. Most people would've thought it some kind of random scratch, but I recognized the Greek letter Lamda when I saw it. The second thing that I noticed was that this newcomer was cutting through the squad of ghouls around her like she was tap-dancing on a stage while humming "Singing in the Rain."

Without any sign of desperation, or any effort at all, I mean.

It was the same height as Karasuba, and with the same slim and athletic build that still held a feminine shape. They wore MBI disciplinary squad uniforms, but with the addition of a laurel wreath symbol emblazoned on their backs instead of the Seikirei crest. It's hair was a glossy pitch black color in a simple strict ponytail, revealing sickly-pale skin around it's neck, like it had lived underground it's whole life. It's mask was white to match its skin, in the visage of a grinning oni, fangs, horns, and all. It's sword was a simple Katana, with a steel blade, brass guard, and a handle wrapped in blue cloth without any real adornment save for a line of characters along each side of the blade, spelling out "Patala," a negative hindu chakra, if I remembered correctly. One of my meals had been into meditating, so I knew lots of weird things about chakras and alignment of energies and similar useless stuff.

Kara charged, slicing forwards with her Quinque. The Seikirei was facing away from her, stabbing her blade into the eye socket of one of our ghouls, but she must've heard Karasuba because she reacted instantly, her katana coming around her to defend against Karasuba's blade. That was a mistake. No steel blade could ever think to stand up to a Quinque. Except, her katana parried Karasuba's blow at such an absolutely flawless angle that not only did her mundane steel sword _not_ shatter against Karasuba's much, much superior weapon, but it _successfully parried_ Karasuba's slash.

The world seemed to freeze as Karasuba took a moment to realize what had just happened, as she hadn't been matched in swordsmanship like that since her early childhood when she'd first started. The Seikirei recovered as Karasuba stood in shock, and swung for Kara's knees. The Seikirei was forced to retreat as five Rinkaku pierced into the asphalt where she'd been a fraction of a second before.

' _Come on, Kara,'_ I pursed my lips tightly as I tried to keep the Seikirei occupied with my five deadly limbs, ' _I need you.'_ The Seikirei hopped, ducked, twisted, and twirled just barely enough for my Kagune to leave her completely unmarked. It was… terrifying isn't the right word, and neither is awe-inspiring, it was… it was surreal to see. It was like fighting a Jedi, with their whole "combat precognition" thing that made them perfect fighters unless they were against each other.

Karasuba's eyes narrowed. She lowered herself into a swordsmanship stance, drawing her Tsunagi and holding in in a reverse grip in her left hand, and tightener her grip around the Nodachi she had in her right.

XXXXXXX

Around the city, many Seikirei were watching the newcomers kill ghouls with confusion, or excitement, depending on their temperament. They all recognized Karasuba the moment that she entered the battlefield, whether they were watching through the television broadcast from a few brave news crews, or personally from the rooftops or the alleys. When the masked Seikirei blocked Karasuba's attack, every Seikirei was shocked and awed. When Karasuba's Ashikabi fought the masked Seikirei with strange predatory limbs, they were intrigued and , they all caught sight of Karasuba's expression, and they collectively froze, as if they were staring into the eyes of the ultimate apex predator.

Karasuba was about to fight in a way she only had before once or twice in her life. She wasn't fighting to enjoy the conflict and slaughter, she was fighting to make the other side die first. Her first strike was careless, overconfident, and left her far too open to retaliation. It was the same problem that Zero had had, that she was used to fighting opponents that she vastly outmatched, and it showed in that initial confrontation with an opponent that might equal the infamous Black Seikirei. There would be no more underestimation or carelessness from Karasuba, and with her grim determination showing on her blank, focused expression, the world would witness her capacity for slaughter.

XXXXXXX


	20. Chapter 18: Beyond the Realm of Mortals

**Chapter 18: Beyond The Realm of Mortals**

I kept to the side of the action, watching Karasuba nervously. There were other Seikirei attacking us, but… Kara was fighting seriously and was still evenly matched with her opponent. I was scared. I couldn't even feel jealous or nervous about how the two were fighting at a level that I couldn't match on my best day. The scariest thing… the Seikirei she was fighting was moving a lot slower than her. She was fighting with a "minimalist" style that only dodged just far enough to not get hit, and parried at exactly the right moment with no more force than necessary. She was fighting so efficiently that even though she _did_ seem to be physically inferior to Karasuba's monstrous strength and speed, she could still match the Black Seikirei blow-for-blow.

Kara's Quinque was probably the only reason the fight had a chance of ending sometime soon. The attacking Seikirei had literally flawless swordsmanship, but her mundane weapon was quickly starting to show signs of wear against the invincible Quinque steel that Karasuba was wielding. Tiny scratches and nicks were appearing randomly along the blade one by one, while Kara's weapon remained pristine. Kara was also using a dual wielding style, something I'd never seen her use before. Her left blade was in a reverse grip, and she was using it like an offensive shield most of the time, parrying her opponent's blows or forcing her to block while Kara attacked the resulting opening with her right hand. It was an agile style that had her using whirling and curving motions instead of straight line movements, the opposite of the minimalist style that the other Seikirei was using. However, her efforts did serve a purpose. Kara may not have been able to land a hit on the freakishly skilled Seikirei, but she was still able to occupy its full attention.

The two of them were moving so fast that they literally kicked up wind with each sword swing, making the lighter objects around them rattle or fly into the air. Their footsteps cracked the concrete and asphalt under their feet. This was the kind of fight that's only supposed to exist in myths and fairytales, where heroes fight with the favor of the gods against evil monsters.

Funny, we were a bunch of monsters squabbling over pieces of the ground.

It was nerve wracking. Kara and I both knew that if it wasn't for the boost in power that all Seikirei got when they were winged, and the fact that her boost was larger than normal because she was bonded to me, she'd never have been able to match one of these new Seikirei, let alone beat one. I could feel the intensity of Kara's focus through our link, I could feel her growing unease as she continued to fail to seize any advantage. It was terrifying on a different level, too, seeing the most powerful person you know being matched in an even fight. So I held back, waiting for the right moment to do the only thing I knew could help. If I pulled it off it might permanently give us an advantage, too.

It was a glory to behold, seeing Karasuba dual wielding. She was using two longswords, one curved and one straight, and yet her form was fluid, even, confident, and ferocious. Any normal swordsman, even one trained in dual wielding, will have one blade shorter than the other because the pair of blades tend to tangle into each other when they're both too long. Kara spat in the face of this limitation, showing her titanic skill in no uncertain terms. Her pair of weapons clashed against the Seikirei's single blade, chipping slowly away at it as the Seikirei calmly defended with minimal movements, though each movement was decisive and quick. I stood there, staring at the Seikirei with my ghoulish eyes active, waiting. On the other side of our bond, Karasuba recognized the feeling of what I was going to attempt, and she redoubled her efforts to push the other Seikirei into a corner. They clashed one last time, the Seikirei blocking both of Karasuba's Quinque at the same time, and the Seikirei was pushed back just a little. I flared my magic, bathing the alley in a purple-black glow, and for a split second, the Seikirei's eyes flicked to mine.

My mind leapt from my body, smashing into hers, Karasuba dropping her physical attack to bolster mine.

For the first time, I felt a strange sort of… resistance as I tried to dominate the Seikirei's mind. Every mind in the past had been like castles with wooden walls. Strong, but inferior to my attacks, kind of like a steel battering ram against said wooden walls. This Seikirei's mind was different, it's walls were made of the same… stuff, that _my_ mind was made of, for lack of a better description. Our minds were fundamentally similar on a level I didn't understand, only felt. If I'd been working alone I'd never have gotten into her mind without spending hours whittling away at her defenses. Lucky for me, I had Karasuba reinforcing all of my mental actions, and we bored a hole through the walls of her mind in a matter of a few minutes.

Inside the Seikirei's mind, was surprisingly little. Her emotions were flat and suppressed, never having had a chance to grow. Her entire life had been spent in the same room, learning to do two things. Wield a sword, and see the future. Her mind had a sort of doorway, or window, or mirror, or something that constantly had a chaotic mess of visions. The moment we "saw" it, I felt Karasuba give the mental equivalent of a gasp. I was too focused on investigating to pay her much attention. I stared at the chaos, seeing visions of… far, far too much to comprehend. I could only catch flickers of movement, and faint images. They were of a bunch of different things. I saw an apple in a fridge, a collection of identical women practicing an identical sword form, I saw myself and Karasuba fighting our opponent, and I saw myself screaming in rage at an old man in robes. The moment I looked away the images became too vague for me to properly remember. Whatever a in the… thing, wasn't her memories. Those we could find easily, this… whatever it was was something else, something far more suspicious, and far more potentially dangerous.

In any case, the Seikirei's memories explained a lot of questions. Minaka had a death squad up his sleeve the whole damn time. 24 weapon-type Seikirei trained in combat from birth. Specifically adjusted to never have an Ashikabi to steal their allegiance, and with… some other edge that they were supposed to have over any other Seikirei. The only reason that Karasuba could match them was because even _she_ received a noticeable increase in power when she was winged by someone like me with a few _thousand_ times the magical reserves of an ordinary human. If a single number could increase in power when winged by an ordinary human, then you can extrapolate. There was a natural limit to how powerful her body could become, and unfortunately she was a physical-type Seikirei, but even so, she was at the absolute peak of her potential. And so, Minaka had specifically told this Death Squad specifically that Karasuba needed to be "terminated," for whatever reason his twisted logic came up with.

The fucker just signed his own goddamn death warrant.

I pulled out of the Seikirei's mind, crushing it as I went, making the Death Squad Seikirei Lambda fall to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Kara," I said, fury dripping from my mind. She knew what I wanted to do before I did. She reached down, and placed her lips on mine, and I channeled a bit of magic through the contact. Behind Kara a set of twisted fairy wings burst into existence with the sound of blood splattering against glass. Her whole body started glowing black. "Kill them all," I snarled, my Kakuja enveloping me gently, like my mother's womb.

XXXXXXX

"Bitch!" Ayato gasped, trying to shrug off losing a limb yet again. Nishiki struggled next to him, as the pair of ghouls combined magic and physical skill to hold their own against three of the attacking Seikirei simultaneously. Around them, more ghouls and magicals struggled against two more of the assailants.

"Back off!" Ayato growled, thrusting his right arm upward, the asphalt around him imitating the movement and charging at the attacking Seikirei like an unstoppable wall of raw physical impact. The Seikirei merely flipped over it with all the grace of a ninja. Or a magical being bred for combat. However, it did let Ayato keep a bit of distance between himself and his opponent. Meanwhile Nishiki kept flailing around infinitely sharp blades of water like some kind of eldritch horror from the deep. A chaotic storm of sharp Kagune-like tentacles slashed and whipped through the space around the lazy ghoul, forcing his opponents to stay at a distance, while they were peppered with tiny attacks in the form of bullets made of water propelled to a few times the speed of sound.

But despite their best efforts they were unable to land a scratch on their opponents, nor could they even force a single hair out of place. The problems wasn't that they were too strong, or too fast, it was that they had utterly flawless timing, which was a blatant sign of unfathomably skill. Their magical reserves were dwindling steadily, and both Ayato and Nishiki knew how things would end the moment they lost their magic.

Then all of a sudden something flashed past them with the sound of a jet plane ripping through the sound barrier, the wave of pressurized air shoved aside by it flinging Them against the walls of the few structures still untouched by the devastation of the fight. In front of them, they saw a sight that they couldn't help but chuckle darkly at. Karasuba systematically _crushing_ the pair of Seikirei with brute force and raw speed, demonic fairy wings fluttering behind her back as she showed the world a sadistically gleeful smile.

Karasuba was already stronger than the other Seikirei under normal circumstances, but they were just a bit faster because of their minimalist style and uncanny sense of timing. In her Norito, Karasuba had a boost that made her just a fraction stronger and faster. And it made all the difference. Karasuba mastered her first sword style when she was five. By the age of ten, she had more sword styles to her name than years of life. By the age of twenty her skill with a blade had reached such an unfathomably high level that she could fight against Seikirei that literally _didn't make mistakes_. Fighting those same Seikirei when you're strong enough to shatter their swords' blades and fast enough to outmaneuver their perfection, while still hard, was easier by orders of magnitude. She cleaved straight through their blocks and redirected her slashes before her opponents could even finish dodging her original vector.

It only took her a few blurred seconds of frantic, desperate combat to shatter the other Seikirei's blades with the sound of tinkling bells, and cleave the heads off her enemies' shoulders. Then, she ran off again, heading for the next fight without a single moment to catch her breath.

Karasuba made the pair of aliens die slowly, making cuts to sever the nerves that controlled their limbs while leaving them with a sense of pain. A stab wound to the abdomen was one of the worst ways to die. It could take days, during which the victim would constantly suffer as they were poisoned from the inside by their own biology. It was one of Karasuba's favorite ways to kill, when she had the time for it, and with Ayato and Nishiki there to make sure they suffered, she indulged her sadism with glee.

"Damn," was all Ayato could say, as he gasped for breath, staggering to take a seat on a piece of rubble.

"No shit," Nishiki snorted. "How the hell did she beat them so easy?"

"She was just stronger and faster, I think." Ayato shrugged, "normal ghouls aren't that much stronger and faster than normal humans, but they're still pretty much invincible against baseline humans. It only takes a little bit to make a big difference." Nishiki stared.

"That almost sounded intelligent," Nishiki deadpanned.

"This coming from you?" Ayato countered.

"Yeah, screw you, at least I went to school," Nishiki grumbled.

"... Nishiki, I know what your grades were. Nowadays you just try to secretly have Matsu google things to make you look smart. _Everyone_ knows."

"... I hate you Ayato, I really do."

XXXXXXX

Being a ghoul has a lot of downsides. Rampant racial discrimination, normally scarce chances for a real meal, an inability to eat things like chocolate and pizza, but it also has it's upsides too.

Which I was reminded of as I brutally tore one of the attacking Seikirei apart with my massive jaws.

Ghouls are naturally stronger and faster than humans. What a lot of people don't know is that when a ghoul's quinque is active they get stronger and faster on top of their original advantage, and Kakuja increase that boost even further. Now as a ghoul with an Ukaku Kagune, and a Rinkaku Kagune, I was naturally fast. My Kagune made me even faster. My Kakuja brought me about even with Karasuba's normal speed. Which, combined with the raw, overwhelming combat ability of my massive Kakuja form, was more than enough for me to fight these new Seikirei head-on.

They were scary, don't get me wrong, but I countered them perfectly. No matter how perfect their fighting skills were, they could only deal flesh wounds. Limited by the mundane steel weapons they had, I was simply too hard to injure. They might get a slash or two in, but I was _twenty feet tall_ now. They just couldn't slash deep enough to do any real damage. Most of the time in a fight the faster combatant will win because the slower one can't hit them while they rain speedy attacks on their opponent until it breaks. Why then are big, tough, and strong units like tanks so effective? Because all of those speedy little attacks do literally nothing against an opponent that can shrug off hits like love taps, and then turn around and pound them into nice, even textured salsa. I was great to get to be the better fighter for once, instead of having Karasuba pound my face into the ground. The Seikirei were a challenge, they'd be boring to fight if they weren't, but I didn't have to worry about my head getting chopped off every few seconds. I had some breathing room, so to speak.

I opened the fight with a good old fashioned barrage of Ukaku shards, along with the spear launched from my tail. With supernatural grace, they dodged, weaved, and deflected at just the exact time to come out of things without a scratch. They couldn't however dodge as I tackled them. My Kakuja easily had the mass of a middle-ish sized truck. Don't ask me how all that mass disappears into my back, it has some weird spacial manipulation stuff going on. Anyways I slammed into them sideways, turning broadside to them to maximize the surface area facing them. They were fast, but not fast enough to move far enough to make me miss. I caught them both as one tried jumping over me and the other tried to go under. They seemed _really_ disoriented, for some odd reason. Because I was at a full sprint on impact, the Seikirei went flying into the walls of the butchery behind them. My Kakuja followed, pulverising the front of the store to charge after them. With my usual luck, one of the Seikirei had caught on one of the meat hooks through her chest, and she was already starting to choke on her own blood, while the other Seikirei just happened to crash through a gun safe against the wall filled with a collection of 12-gauge shotguns.

I took a pair of buckshot rounds, one to each eye, and though normal guns normally don't work on ghouls, this was my eyes, and she fired at them while they were open and a mere few feet from the end of the barrel. I went blind as my regeneration tried to spit all the tiny rounds out of my eye sockets so my eyes could heal. I quickly stuck my head out of my Kakuja's chest to see, just in time to take the Seikirei's sword's tip between the eyes. The wound didn't even make me flinch, despite the six or seven inches of steel through my brain, and I merely took advantage of such a wonderful conductor linking me to the Seikirei. Her eyes widened behind her mask, and she tried to let go and run away, but she wasn't faster than the lightning that flashed across her sword and into her internal organs, guided by my intent. She cooked on the inside and not the outside, like the opposite of what happens in a microwave. After a few seconds, I cut the flow of electricity and she dropped, smelling of charred flesh.

With a pinging sound like marbles dropping on the floor the tiny pieces of buckshot finally were ejected from my mutilated Kakuja's eyes, and my head retracted into its chest as vision returned to me through my monstrous outer form's eyes. In spite of my victory, I grimaced, feeling the not-insignificant drop in my reserves of magical power. My magical core was steadily growing, and I knew it was monstrously large for its age, but I was still only 14. Apparition I had perfected to a level that I could use it with a miniscule fraction of its original cost. Other magic, like my electrokinesis and other ways of manifesting lightning, hit my magical reserves like a fat man robs a donut shop. Regardless, I didn't have the luxury of slacking off. That was three… no, five now-Karasuba found a few more-of the Seikirei killed, but there were 19 still going all genocidal blitzkrieg on me and my minions. I had maybe six or seven left in me, Karasuba was going to have to handle the rest.

XXXXXXX

Karasuba's life had completely changed in some ways when she was winged, but in other ways, unexpectedly, her life remained the same.

All of a sudden she was never alone. She had someone who constantly knew exactly what she was feeling and thinking and she literally could never be lonely again for the rest of her life. Further, exposure to her Ashikabi's emotional range had encouraged her own stunted growth to shift into a less malformed version of itself, making her much more logical and functional than the psychotic murderess she used to be. She had friends-real friends-who appreciated the same things she did and related to her on a personal level. There was quite literally nothing more that she could ask for.

She was still a career murderess, but she didn't just kill anyone that made eye contact. Only the ones that pissed her off or went against her Destined One's goals.

The euphoric, sensual joy that she gained from sinking cold steel into the beating hearts of her enemies and immersing herself in the spray of blood from their arteries still stuck around, especially after a hard fight against an opponent that was a legitimate challenge.

Which is why as Karasuba plunged her Tsunagi hilt-deep into the throat of her most recent opponent her knees nearly shook with pleasure as the blood splattered her already mostly-stained-red clothing, hair, and face.

She rolled around the body, using it as a meat shield against her other opponents and ripped her blade from the chest of the not-quite-completely-dead corpse, prompting another small spray of blood that added to the bloody high that filled her with a warm, pleasant buzz, but with a clarity that no alcohol or psycho-active chemical could ever hope to equal. Karasuba was completely and utterly addicted to killing, and with her Ashikabi and her new… her new family, she could enjoy herself without guilt. All of the rest of Carneval's leadership were talented and regular killers themselves.

She backflipped, coming over the falling corpse in a parabolic arc, swinging a blade at each of the attacking Seikirei beneath her as she passed through the air above them. Her wings fluttered through the air like wraith's wings as she leapt, her whole body glowing a grey-ish black. The force of her Quinque impacting her opponent's attempts to block fractured the ground underneath the Seikirei's feet, and wreaked havoc on their spines and knees, all joints that were particularly necessary for combat. She finished her leap, and cut through the back of the pair's necks faster than they could turn around, hampered as they were with fresh injuries. Karasuba breathed for a moment, letting the thrill soak over her for the space of a few heartbeats. Then, she blinked in confusion, and looked down.

She was floating a few inches above the ground.

Hesitantly, she nudged the magic coursing through her like a raging typhoon of adrenaline, and she rose a little bit higher. She grinned, showing that she had blood in her mouth and on her teeth as well as her skin and clothes. Her Ashikabi's power was so intense that it brought out the pinnacle of her Tama's potential in a way that no _human's_ ever could. She was significantly stronger bonded to Zero than she would've been with anyone else, and it appeared that that difference had crossed some sort of threshold.

Karasuba laughed like a demon as she rose into the air and shot through the streets, all delicate objects shattering in the wake of her passing. She collided with her next victim fast enough to fracture it's ribcage.

Karasuba was in heaven.

XXXXXXX

"Shittiest day of my goddamn life!" ex-lieutenant Taka Yamato growled as he held down the trigger of the light machine gun he was holding, spent shells flying through the air around him and the other members of his squad as they tried to pin down the masked freak that was attacking them and all of the other members of Carneval.

"Down!" a shout rang out, and Yamato's squad ducked under the cover of rubble in time for a trio of RPGs to pass over their heads and slam into the ground, detonating with a boom, a flash of flame, and a burst of concussive force that the ex-military men could feel in their bones.

"No visual!" Yamato yelled as he peeked his head over the edge of the rubble he had hid behind, odly noting that the covering of dust on the piece of concrete he'd ducked up against had been blown off by the explosion.

"Visual! It's still moving!" came a call from one of the RPG-equipped men up in the buildings.

"Shit!" another member of Yamato's squad screamed as a human shape lunged toward him, scorched katana in hand. It was completely covered in blackened burns and seared flesh. Even as they watched a few places still burned. It was only barely recognizable as human. "Shi-glurk" the man screamed, as his LMG punched holes in the shape, but he still took the sword to the throat where he wasn't armored. Yamato vaulted over the rubble, dropping his gun, and ripped his combat knife from its holster on his chest.

"Die, fucking monster!" Yamato screamed, as he stabbed his knife at the thing's head. It doged, but his knife still sunk hilt-deep into the black flesh at the side of its neck. Blood spurted from the wound, but it still managed to swing its arm and cleave Yamato's left arm from his body before it finally fell over and died.

"Officer down!" the closest man to Yamato yelled. He ran up close and quickly ripped his helmet off, followed by a bandana underneath. The bandana was tied around the stump of the arm to staunch the bleeding.

"Tango neutralised, one officer injured," the com unit said into his radio as the rest of the men quickly searched to make sure that the area was clear. "Medic inbound!" the com unit announced after a moment.

A Diabolo popped into existence nearby, and then dropped to the ground next to Yamato's gasping form. It pressed a finger to the wound, which reacted like it was touched by hydrogen peroxide, the dirt bubbling off of it and the bleeding stopping. A tiny film formed on the end of the severed limb to keep it clean. Yamato breathed as he felt the effects of anesthetic wash over him.

"Field dressing applied, evac and wait for a new office to bring further orders," the Diabolo commanded, and then it apparated away, with no time, words, or effort wasted.

"Grab the officer, move!" the acting lieutenant called out, and the contingent of men started marching as quickly as possible back towards the Carneval headquarters, Taka Yamato carried by a soldier with a lighter rifle with a shoulder strap.

A few minutes later a radio message went out to all of the human soldiers under Carneval's banner in Matsu's voice.

"Be advised, Tangos are faster than humans by a significant margin, but once they're slowed down or injured they can be killed as easily as anyone else. Arms use freedom is raised to level 3, prepare for heavy weapons deployment."

XXXXXXX

My magical core was shriveled up in the back of my mind and _whining_ like a starving puppy. At least, that's the sensation I felt, like I had a stomach in my mind that hadn't seen food in weeks. I laid on the ground surrounded by human corpses and one Seikirei corpse and just let the rain wash over me, spreading the red stain of blood over my limp limbs.

Karasuba's magical core was still going strong. She didn't have to actively use magic to fight, though once she started _flying_ she began to dip into her reserves of power. Surprisingly, it didn't take much power for her self-levitation and self-propulsion, which flew in the face of everything the British Wizards "knew" to be true. The stark difference between our systems of spellcasting had me forming a few very interesting theories, but I wasn't going to be proving hypotheses and proving "magical law" wrong laying exhausted on the ground.

I was still too weak.

All of my combat tactics were based around sudden bursts of overwhelming power, from the way I used my Kagune, to the type of magic that I studied, Raw magic blasts and the like. It was effective against single targets, and in small-unit engagements, but in a higher-level conflict like Carneval was facing, and probably would face as time went on, my all-or-nothing combat style was just a way to get myself killed. I needed to fix that problem. I had huge magical reserves, but I kept wasting most of it regenerating wounds, and in the inefficiency of my spells. The first thing that I was doing once this all ended was training like a madman to get myself a way to fight without completely emptying the gas tank within a handful of seconds of combat.

I needed to physically train, and I needed to get my body to grow up. I didn't really mind looking like a child under most occasions, but my lack of reach and lower potential for brute strength was a severe hamper on my physical combat abilities. I could probably figure out a spell to speed up my aging. It's not like it could hurt me if I went too far with it, me being immortal and all. And I needed to enchant weights so that I could actually work out and train, maybe even go full Dragon Ball and make a gravity chamber. And I needed to fine tune my electrokinesis. I'd been so focused on making new things and learning new ways of using magic that I never spent any time on mastering what I already knew how to do. Mastering apparition brought the cost of teleportation to a near negligible amount. Mastering the rest of my magical armory would probably lengthen my effective combat lifetime exponentially.

But Minaka needed to die first. I didn't have the time to go training. The man had literally declared open war with this attack on Carneval. As soon as Carneval could regroup, we were going to tear his tower down from beneath him and flay him alive. Maybe I'd even have him sign a will making me the heir to MBI's considerable money and influence. I didn't really care about afterwards though, I was too preoccupied trying to figure out exactly how I wanted him to die.

I groaned, and rolled to my stomach, forcing myself to ignore the exhaustion weighing down my body, and stumbled to my feet.

XXXXXXX

When Kaneki first realized he was a ghoul it was the worst day of his life. Instantly, all of his plans for the future were null and void and he found that his entire philosophy for life was something he could never live up to anymore. He had to eat humans to survive, he had to hurt others for his own sake instead of being the one hurt for others' sake. But, then he met a young ghoul who didn't even have a name. He gained magic, and he… he rose above all of the normal people in the world. Kaneki wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice himself for Touka, or Hinami, or Zero, or Ayato, or any of the people he considered a friend. But everyone else… they just didn't matter. And if they threatened the people who did matter then they needed to be destroyed at all costs.

Kaneki thought deep thoughts when he had a brief break in the fighting, like when he took a moment to breathe fire and immolate an entire street in white-hot flame. Kaneki was one of the ghouls with the strongest magical cores capable of unleashing more than double or triple the amount of power that the weaker ghouls could. Even still, not even he could release a wide-area destruction spell of that quality more than a few times before he'd lose his regeneration.

However in his current circumstances the spell was worth it. When the flames died down they revealed a heavily charred Seikirei. It;s eyes were so burnt that it was stumbling, totally blind and with bones showing in several places. Before it could recover from the agony of being burned alive, Kaneki rushed forward and cut its head off with a long Rinkaku blade.

It was only then that he allowed himself to fall to the ground, gasping and grabbing at the two-foot-long shard of the Seikirei's sword that had broken off impaled through his right eye socket. Kaneki managed to get a grip on the slick blood-covered piece of metal and pull it from his skull with a grating sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A few seconds later his eye was finishing sewing itself back together.

A year before Kaneki would have thrown up at his actions. He'd not only killed someone, but he'd killed her in a way that tortured her sadistically before finally allowing her the mercy of death. A part of him that had formed while being tortured by Jason was gleeful, happy to deal pain back on the world that had so wronged him, but Kaneki was more apathetic to the kill than anything, in fact the emotion he felt after separating the Seikirei's head from her shoulders was relief. He wondered to himself sometimes, about how easy it was to kill, and how easy it was to forget to regret killing.

He looked at the corpse with two ghoul eyes, and moved on, breathing deeply and trying to recover before hunting for his next kill.

XXXXXXX

"All hostiles have stopped moving. Dispatching squads to ensure death," Matsu's voice came from a nearby Clown's radio. I walked up to him and motioned for the radio. At first he was confused to see a child in a warzone, and then he was surprised to see said child giving him an order. Then, I got to watch as he realized that he was in the presence of the big-bad leader of Carneval and someone that could kill him several times over accidentally if I didn't pay attention to what I was eviscerating.

"Matsu, how many did we lose," I asked the moment the radio was placed in my hand and I could push the "send" switch.

"... 40% of our standing forces," Matsu reluctantly told me.

"Motherfucker!" I shouted and I kicked a piece of the rubble cluttering the devastated street, sending the rock through the air and across the street to impale itself into a concrete wall.

"Everyone's alright though, we've got Diabolos working on healing the worst cases," Matsu told me, somewhat insensitively telling me that everyone that mattered was still alive. Whatever, the cannon fodder that died would have their names written on a memorial or something, I just cared about my family.

"We're having a Ringmaster meeting, Minaka is fucking dying within the week," I growled, and I tossed the radio back to the Clown, who was eyeing the rock impaled in concrete warily, and barely managed to catch the radio.

XXXXXXX

 **Holy shit guys, I'm still alive but I'm so sorry it's been something like a month and a half since the last chapter. I was chugging along through summer, getting ready for college and working my summer job, when all of a sudden I found out that I needed another $6,000 for tuition and I did not have a credit score to qualify for more student loans. Luckily, it looks like I am going to be able to attend classes, but it took a lot of back-and-forth work with the financial aid office and a helluva lot of playing hardball with the problem.**

 **Anyways, I move into my dorm this Wednesday and classes start the Monday after that. So for now, I'm looking at a two-week updating schedule while I get used to having classes and save writing for the weekend. If I don't keep updating you guys have full permission to yell at me. I've still got way too much of this story to write to lag off now.**

 **Thank you all for your patience, and I'll be back soon!**


	21. Chapter 19: The Art of War

**Chapter 19: The Art of War**

"That was embarrassing," Nishiki groaned as he flopped onto one of the couches in the Carneval penthouse. Matsu scooted next to him to cuddle and handed him a glass of hard liquor. We'd all hobbled back to our home base to recover, but none of us were in the mood for sleeping. We'd had our asses handed to us, despite the fact that we won and nobody important died. Matsu was probably the most disturbed out of all of us, however. She'd been involved in slaughter before when she was a member of MBI's Discipline Squad, but back then she saw all the humans dying like NPCs in a video game, mere pawns on a board. Now, she'd been watching our soldiers, people that she was emotionally invested in, publicly undergo evisceration and other messy paths to death. She'd developed a strong sense of morality under Miya's care, and it was bothering her to see slaughter on such a scale.

"It's not like they were even all that much stronger or faster than us," Ayato sighed, "no offence, but they were just so… perfect, beyond even Karasuba. She beat them with her Norito, but the rest of us?" Perfect. That was the word we all wanted to use to describe the Seikirei we were up against. They could block at exactly the right angle and dodge just enough by a millimeter. It was like trying to fight a stereotypical futuristic combat robot that didn't make mistakes. The only way to beat them was with sheer overwhelming power, and they were all on par with single-number Seikirei, the combatants with the most raw power any of us had ever seen.

"If he pulls something like that again we're going to lose all our men. They won't follow us if we can't protect them," I sighed, "that's what I'm really worrying about right now, if we had to we could kill them again if Minaka did pull another batch of super-Seikirei out of his ass. " Mentally I gave Kara a nudge to calm her down from Ayato's comment. She wasn't _really_ angry at him… but I didn't want the distraction of sudden beheadings in our meeting right then.

"I know why it was so hard for us to kill them, anyways," Kara spoke up. I blinked, and turned to her. A moment later, so did everyone else because it was obvious that I had no idea and Kara and I normally shared everything. She held eye contact with us for a moment, and started laughing at our expressions.

"Well come on, share with the class?" I prompted grumpily.

"Fine," she chuckled, "they had combat precognition."

"... shit," Ayato sighed. I had completely frozen, thinking about the… thing we'd found inside the Seikirei's mind.

"Precognition, you mean seeing the future?" Kaneki confirmed.

"Maybe, I'm not entirely sure, but it was some form of omniscience," Karasuba shrugged, "it was kind of like Zero-chan's magical core actually, imagine a shattered mirror with each piece showing a possibility. That's what it looked like to me."

"But how could they possibly use something like that in combat? I mean they're seeing fractal possible futures, they weren't near fast enough to think through things that quickly," Matsu wondered, fascinated.

"Maybe their minds were faster than their bodies," Touka suggested, "it's not like it's all out there for abilities we've witnessed."

"You've got a point there," Nishiki smiled wryly.

"Did they have the abilities of physical Seikirei?" I cut in.

"What?" Nishiki's train of thought was completely derailed.

"... no, they didn't," Kaneki's eyes widened, catching the drift of my conjecture.

"Think about it," I started pacing, "the single number Seikirei are the most powerful Seikirei, yes, but their abilities are all the most basic on a conceptual scale." I looked at Karasuba. "Some were faster and stronger," I looked to Matsu, "some could handle micromanaging multiple lines of thought at once." I shook my head, "Pyrokinesis, aerokinesis, hydrokinesis, geokinesis, it's like they took the most conceptually simple supernatural abilities and started with them. Now," I turned back around, getting into my theory, "as more and more Seikirei show up, they start showing much greater complexity to their abilities, such as being faster, stronger, _and_ with limited control over wind. It's like the single numbers were prototypes and then the later numbers were hybridized or specialized models." I turned to Matsu. "Maybe these new ones are just the next step in Brain-type Seikirei evolution, so to speak." Matsu looked fairly put-off at the idea. No one ever wanted to be called "obsolete."

"So what do we do?" Touka asked. Everyone else looked to me to guidance, as had become the norm over the last month or so. I rubbed my temples in frustration, and went over to sit on a bar stool next to where Karasuba was leaning against the bar.

"Well I think in one way, this was a good thing," I started, "we found out that our strategies are absolute shit against this kind of opponent. Throwing lost of bodies at our opponents can kill them, but not everybody can heal like we can and we take way too many losses like that. We have Hero-units, we need to use them properly. And we need better ways to communicate and coordinate our forces, so they can adapt to new types of enemies they aren't trained to handle, and we need to get them better guns and armor. Matsu does a great job coordinating with the resources she has, but she's limited to speaking through speakers or sending text messages, and those can waste time when she should be able to just mark objectives on a digital display. Second, our Hero-units simply need to be more powerful. If our enemies are going to try to win by out-finessing us, then we'll just have to overpower them because we don't have the time on our hands to spend years getting ridiculously skilled."

"Hero-units?" Nishiki raised an eyebrow. I mentally snorted at the fact that _of course_ Nishiki got caught up on me using video game lingo.

"The term already exists, why should I make up a 'better' one?" I answered with a long-suffering tone. "So far we've been relying on the same technology and tactics that everyone else does. That's giving MBI the home field advantage." I closed my eyes and thought carefully. "We need to make our own gadgets. If Matsu can hook herself up to a specialized battlefield communication network that she can micro-manage in real time then our troop coordination will improve drastically. It'll be like having an AI manage and coordinate everything."

"If I'm going to do that I'm going to need more servers to shunt cognitive functions off to," Matsu spoke up, " I can only do so much with my current equipment before overclocking the processors starts to melt things."

"... what?" I deadpanned. "Shunt off to… Matsu, you use your technology like extensions of your brain?" My eyes went very, very wide.

"You… didn't know that?" she blushed slightly with an awkward laugh. "There is a reason I named myself a Brain-type…"

"This… this is so open to exploitation," my eyes unfocused as I fantasized about the potential applications of this facet of her abilities. "If you use them like a part of your brain, then do you still stay connected while you're asleep?"

"Yeah," she shrugged, not getting it.

"And you can multitask as much as you want based on how much processing power you can allocate?" I continued. She nodded in confirmation. "Can you learn things by surfing the web using the tech you're linked to?" I asked one final question. Matsu nodded again, still not getting it. Kara was grinning next to me as she saw what I had in mind. I started laughing.

"What?" Nishiki demanded protectively, pulling Matsu a little closer.

"Okay so how much do you guys know about what Artificial Intelligences are capable of?" I asked. There was a bunch of shrugging.

"They're great at coordinating and improving technology, right?" Kaneki offered. He was probably the one with the most exposure to the idea of AI due to his love of literature, so it made sense that he knew more than the others.

"Okay so if we want a security system, we put a bunch of cameras everywhere, right?" I began. "But then how do you program them? Do you use facial recognition software that gets thrown off by a disguise or a shift in lighting? Do you match body-heat images that can be thrown off by holding a cigarette? The reason that those kinds of things have flaws is because they can't be programmed to have the same ability to analyze and make judgements that a person can." I gestured wildly towards Matsu, trying to point out that we didn't _have_ to get software with good judgement because Matsu would always be better at it.

"Not to mention," I continued, "If we got Matsu enough processing power she could outmatch the technological research abilities of the rest of the world combined. She'd have the ingenuity and creativity of a living person _and_ the analytical abilities and practical knowledge of a synthetic mind. Our grunt-level soldiers are only human, and they're only as good as their equipment allows. If we give them laser guns and power armor they'll be able to do so much more."

"But that's not even the most important thing," I threw up my hands, "MBI is heavily controlled by electronics, if we get Matsu enough processing power she can take over MBI's network and pretty much get control of the whole building. We do that, and we can just skip past all of Minaka's warm bodies and attack him directly."

"Okay, so Matsu is overpowered, please don't nerf," Nishiki sighed, "but what about us?"

"Right, right," I sighed, "well in my case my biggest problem was that I'm still not skilled enough, and I blow through my magical reserves too quickly because of my style of casting. So the only way I can boost my combat ability quickly enough is to find another Seikirei, so I have another magical core to draw from."

' _Just make sure she's not weak, I'm not going to put up with a whiny child,'_ Karasuba instructed me grumpily.

' _Oh, I'm having an affair with someone my age, sorry I forgot to let you know'_ I deadpanned. She snorted. "So yeah," I turned back to the redhead, "Matsu, if you could just get me a list of Seikirei that are still unwinged that'd be great. Don't go out of your way trying to find them all though, you're going to be busy enough without most of us here."

"Okay… and us?" Ayato prompted me.

"Well," I sighed, "none of you are Kakuja. That needs to change."

"Wait," Nishiki held up his hands and waved them around in the universal "stop" gesture. "You want us all to go through a process that has a high chance of turning us all into insane berzerkers, and complete the whole transformation, without getting caught on camera, fast enough to handle Minaka before he attacks us with something we can't handle?"

"... well when you say it out loud like that it sounds hard, but hear me out," I leaned my head back against Karasuba, absently noting that I'd gotten tall enough for my head to brush against the bottom of Kara's cleavage when I did so, but I didn't let my train of thought derail again. "The problem with normal ghouls becoming Kakuja is that their minds are eroded by the other ghouls they eat, right?" They all nodded. "Well, normal ghouls don't have the same kind of symbiotic bond we do with our Rc cells. Our minds have more influence. I never had any issues with losing my mind, so my _educated guess_ is that you guys won't either."

"...okay, fine, become a giant rage monster has been added to my to-do list," Nishiki snarked. "Though now that I think about it, can you imagine if Zero lost his mind? I mean, he's already clumsy enough, he'd barely be able to walk!" There was a very brief moment of silence.

"Nishiki, one of these days I'm going to force feed you your own spine," I sighed, as the others chuckled. Not that it was all that much of a threat to him, though. It'd grow back.

"So, if we're all going to be off in Kakurega being cannibals, who's going to keep Carneval running? Matsu can't do everything by herself," Touka asked, always the voice of reason.

"Well first of all I'm staying here," I pointed out, "and secondly… Carneval got a lot bigger a lot more quickly than I think we were ready for. I wanted to start a mafia, and play around a bit, live a fantasy, you know? Instead I got an organisation that's acting more like an organized military dictatorship than anything else. I mean we haven't even been doing any real crimes!" I whined, and then slumped. "Anyways, we honestly have too many people for us to have the command structure be only 'us-Matsu-them.' If we're going to be acting like a military then we need to work like one. There were a few people that did especially well against Minaka's latest bullshit, I was thinking of using that fight to give people actual ranks."

"Uh…" Kaneki spoke up, "I don't really want to change the subject, but I think this is the right moment to bring it up. What are we going to do after Minaka's dead?" He hurriedly explained further, "I mean, we still have to handle him, but we should make plans for what's going to happen after. MBI will fall apart without him reverse-engineering Seikirei technology and keeping them ahead of the development curve. Shito Teito is sovereign territory though, owned by MBI. If the company falls apart then the whole place will be lawless…"

I turned to look at Matsu.

"After we kill Minaka and get access to MBI's servers, can you transfer ownership of the city?" I asked. She simply nodded. "Well," I gave them a harried smirk, "if we're a military, then we need a nation to be the military _of_."

"Oh," Nishiki blinked.

"I could live with being an actual princess," Touka mused. I snorted.

"No, if anyone's the princess here, it's Kaneki," I pointed out, making the others laugh and Kankei stammer. "Well, him or Hina-chan." Hinami blushed from behind the bar where she was organising the alcohol and cleaning shot glasses. I sighed. "Well," I pulled away from Karasuba, "ain't no rest for the wicked. Time to try and save our lives."

XXXXXXX

"I've got the lists you asked for," Matsu told me, handing me a tablet-datapad-thing. I thanked her from the incredibly comfortable leather recliner I was sitting in at the penthouse, and then immediately started looking over the information contained within.

"So who're you looking at?" Karasuba asked me restlessly. One of those things about Karasuba that made perfect sense in hindsight despite being completely unexpected was that she was hopelessly fidgety and restless. Karasuba absolutely _could not_ stand doing nothing. Even elevator rides were frustrating for her, and she usually ended up tapping a foot impatiently or running her eyes over her current bladed weapon to check its edge as a form of nervous habit. She _very much_ appreciated my ability to teleport from location to location so she could skip all the tedious elevator rides up and down from our penthouse.

"Give me a second to look," I scowled, giving the list a once-over. It was a small list, but there weren't very many Seikirei left unbonded. "Well, starting at the top of the list, we've got no. 29, Isaribi, the Cloud Seikirei. She's an elemental type and can only control mist, so she shouldn't be a challenge at all."

"Oh," Karasuba tilted her head in thought, "I think I've heard of her. I was almost sent to take care of her because she was bothering businesses by smothering a few blocks of the city in fog."

"Huh," I grunted, "maybe don't lead with that when we actually meet her, though. Just a thought." Kara flicked me in the head for my back-talk, and my fractured skull repaired itself after a moment.

"No time like the present then, yes?" Kara took my by the shoulder and physically pulled me out of the chair. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"You're being… strangely peppy. Kind of like a cheerleader before a highschool football game," I pointed out.

"Don't be rude," she quipped back, but didn't actually deny it. "I've got what may be a difficult opponent for the first time since I was taken out of the test tube I came from. I'm excited for it." I sighed, and took her by the hand, apparating to the last place Isaribi was known to be. Kara was excited like a little kid getting a new favorite toy because her life was in danger for the first time in her life. Well, I already knew she was crazy… not that I'm one to talk. I was still sipping on blood from the Seikirei that attacked us out of a juice box. There was still some magic left in the blood that I could metabolize, and anything was a help at the moment. I was still exhausted even hours later. I'd drained myself before, but I'd never been so _utterly_ drained since the night Touka found me wandering the 20th ward after I escaped from Kanou the first time.

Anyways the point is I was laughing at myself a little because I was a little kid drinking from a juice box in public, except the juice was actually magical alien blood, while I was holding the hand of a girl much taller than me who was skipping along like a big sister taking her younger sibling on a trip, when we were actually heading somewhere to kidnap a young woman and force her into a lifelong commitment. I got a kick out of waving cheerfully at random pedestrians and having them wave back with indulgent smiles.

Isaribi was a Seikirei that Karasuba remembered as a lazy, unmotivated elemental type that could control mist. When she was in MBI she was so lazy that she'd fall asleep in the middle of power testing, or even in the middle of a sentence while talking with someone. She had long, silvery-bluish hair because she never built up the motivation to get it cut, and she was infamous for constantly having a blanket wrapped around herself to keep her warm, even during combat. She was last sighted not far from Akihabara, an entire district of the city virtually dedicated to being a market for videogames, anime, and other fandom-merchandise, which is what had me and Kara strolling through the city hoping that I could catch the magic-laced scent of a Seikirei not far from the nerd heaven. It probably wasn't completely safe for us to be out in the city alone, but considering that everybody else was miles away in an entirely different city and anyone that _could_ be with us would just be squishy humans or cannon-fodder ghouls, we were probably still as safe from Minaka's machinations as we were going to be.

Akihabara is a colorful place. The buildings are literally colored in all kinds of bright shades to advertise the various franchises that they sell. The place looks kind of like it's made out of candy or confetti. It was also completely packed. Me and Kara made our way along the sidewalks, but we were constantly having to deal with huge crowds of people going every which way. Karasuba… did not handle crowds well, but I kept her busy by mentally talking with her over what kind of blade would go best with my body type. It was a long, torturous few hours making our way through the throngs of Otaku shoppers, and by the time my nose caught the scent of a Seikirei I was halfway ready to just pop out my Kagune and start slaughtering my way through the humans I was so annoyed, never mind Karasuba's level of stress.

Almost desperately I pulled Kara along behind me, crossing a few blocks and then finally through the front doors of an internet cafe. There was a small crowd of people near the front of the building watching some short-haired young girl desperately playing some online game, and an employee trying to convince the girl that she needed to pay for more time on the computer while being completely outmatched in volume by the crowd cheering the girl on. The Seikirei's scent was all over the place, so I ran my eyes around the room, trying to find the Seikirei. I let go of Kara, and started checking underneath the computer station desks and the like to see if she was sleeping in some dark cubbyhole or something. I found no sign of her, and my temper was starting to flare.

Kara gave me a mental nudge, and pointed mechanically at the girl surrounded by the crowd as if in a daze. I followed her finger, saw the girl, and only after a few moments and checking Karasuba's thoughts did I realize what she was trying to tell me. The girl was wide-eyed, sitting straight in her seat, and her fingers were flying around her keyboard in controlled chaos. She was so focused she was barely even _blinking_. Around her, the crowd was cheering her on as she played some kind of fantasy online game's player-versus-player mode. Her hair was cut in a short mess around her head, and it spiked in random directions. She was wearing a tank top and sweatpants with sandals, and she had a tattoo of a Moogle from the Final Fantasy franchise on her right arm. She looked sleep-deprived, and completely unkempt, she had the kind of appearance someone has after doing multiple all-nighters in a row and continuing to function only by the blessing of caffeine. _She was Isaribi._

I almost stabbed her right then and there for giving me such a hard time. Fortunately, she was saved from impalement by the timer on the game running out and a "Victory!" message displaying for all to see. The crowd cheered, and she turned around in her seat to give them a double thumbs-up. Her eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by a darkened ring of shaded puffy skin, but she smiled brightly like she'd just won the lottery. Lots of members of the crowd started giving her high-fives and congratulating her on her win. I got tired of that shit _real quick._

I shoved my way to the front of the crowd, probably breaking a bone or two in my indiscretion, grabbed her by the jaw and planted a kiss on her lips, lacing the action with my magic. Immediately a set of four wings formed behind her, made of mist but so thin and transparent that they looked like glass, and I felt a link to her mind snap into place alongside Karasuba's. Unlike the last time, there wasn't a violent expansion of my magical core, because it was already large enough to handle a bond with a creature as magically powerful as a Seikirei. Isaribi's eyes went even wider, and she scrambled backwards, pulling away from me with a startled shriek. The crowd around us screamed, and backed away in shock, but seemed strangely unafraid. _Gamers._

I was keeping a close eye on Isaribi's mind through our link, and her first reaction to being winged was to attack me by filling my nose with dust so I couldn't breathe, but before she could react instinctively she realized that she'd been winged, and recognized that killing her Ashikabi was not a particularly good plan of action.

Well, that and she noticed Karasuba. She's a _wonderful_ aide in negotiations.

"Hi, call me Zero. You're my Seikirei now. Minaka hates my guts and will probably try to kill you now with his secret army of Seikirei. But, before you overreact I've got my own private army. And I live in a private penthouse surrounded by endless riches. Let's go back to my penthouse before we're bothered by the aforesaid secret army of Seikirei." I delivered to her calmly, and held out my hand for her to grab so I could apparate us back to Carneval's home base.

"... what? Minaka has an army?" she blinked slowly, her few alert brain cells struggling to process the information overload, "You have an army? Endless riches? What?" She looked from me to my hand, and back to my face, to Karasuba, and back to me. The humans around us shuffled uncomfortably, and I heard a bone snap back into place. My train of thought shattered, I turned and looked at the culprit, a highschool age boy who looked like any other average highschool boy. He was holding his forearm out in front of him with his other arm pulling away from his body, the stretching action having pulled the fragments of his forearm bones back into place.

"... You learn a lot reading random stuff on the internet…" he said out loud, like he felt he needed to explain. Isaribi nodded in satisfaction behind me.

"Yep, everyone underestimates the value of being hopelessly addicted to internet," she agreed with him in a matter-of-fact tone.

Oh, Karasuba's shiny meat cleaver, Isaribi wasn't lazy, she was sleep deprived because she was a _Nerd_.

 _And I'd just forged a direct mental link to her forever._

I fell to my knees, devastated at the thought that I'd be kept awake by a link to Isaribi binge-watching anime or playing "just one more level." Karasuba seemed equally perturbed, but that was mostly because she thought Isaribi was a complete non-threat and the fact that Isaribi almost tried to kill me had shattered her opinion of the girl. In a positive way, but still.

"So… hi?" Isaribi broke the silence, giving me and Karasuba a once-over and trying to come up with an opinion of me. I kept kneeling, completely unequipped on how to handle the situation. Everything that I'd encountered before could be solved either by killing the problem, or stealing the problem. Now… I was facing a problem that I could only solve with social skills. Apart from my sarcasm I didn't exactly specialize in those…

"Well, so much more my knight in shining armor sweeping me off my feet," Isaribi huffed, crossing her arms with a pout when she realized that I wasn't going to say or do something dramatic.

"I am nowhere near drunk enough to handle this," I sighed, slumping backwards and resting my back against Karasuba from where I was kneeling.

"You can't get drunk," Karasuba helpfully supplied, also trying to work through her shock with her own method, being a smart-ass.

" _Exactly_ ," I growled. I shook my head, and grabbed Isaribi by her pantleg, and Karasuba placed her hand on my shoulder, feeling my intentions through our bond. With the three of us physically in contact, I apparated us back to the penthouse. Since Isaribi was sitting when I apparated she popped back into reality a foot and a half above the ground, and she fell sprawling with an indignant squawk.

I threw myself back into one of our recliners, and dove across the newly-established link to see Isaribi's mind. It was different. Karasuba's mind worked kind of like a helicopter flying over an ocean of memories. Whenever she thought about something, her memories were pulled towards her center of consciousness. It showed in her personality in that she was focused, thought in linear logical ways, and her train of thought was clearly defined at all times. She looked at a tree, and saw a tree. Isaribi, on the other hand, her mind was put together like a dust bunny. Her mind was a horrifically complicated interconnected web of memories chaining subject to subject to subject. Her actual thoughts manifested as a sort of fairy-light type of thing, flickering around through the dense web as her thoughts flew between interconnected subjects and parallel viewpoints. When Isaribi saw a tree she thought of all the different stories she'd heard about trees, and what kind of tree it was and what that meant, and all kinds of other random bits of information that I could barely keep track of. Trying to follow her train of thought was like trying to read a book through a kaleidoscope.

Human minds were fairly simple and uniform as a rule, being built in layers with the top layer being their "conscious" mind, and the lower layers being the memories and "subconscious." My Seikirei were wildly different, but then again they were magical aliens, it'd be weird if they were the same as humans.

"Welcome to Carneval," I told her simply, "You can read whatever you want to know about it from my mind." Isaribi stared at me for a moment, and then rolled over and threw up on the floor. Right, first timers always react badly to magical teleportation… oops.

XXXXXXX

"This is literally the coolest thing I've ever seen," Isaribi told us flatly, staring at the monitors covering every exposed surface of Matsu's room.

"Isn't it?" Matsu asked, her smile positively _beatific_.

"Do you ever play any games in here?" Isaribi asked.

"... a bit," Matsu admitted cautiously, her eyes narrowed.

"Have you ever played co-op FPS games in here with surround sound?" Isaribi continued, still drooling over the high-definition screens in every direction.

"No," Matsu shook her head, seemingly confused. "What's an FPS?" For a moment Isaribi stared at her.

"Nee-chan," Isaribi slid over to place an arm around Matsu's shoulders, the other arm stretched outward as if to point at the distant horizon. "Let me introduce you to a magical land of guns and explosions and glory."

I laughed as Karasuba told herself ' _Do not kill Zero's other Seikirei. Do not kill Zero's other Seikirei.'_ loud enough for it to cross over to my mind without her trying to let me hear it. She seemed to be branching off from her habit of killing everything that looked at her funny. Good to know that she was downgrading from Dangerous Lunatic to just Mildly Insane.

"Yes, yes, you can have your 'join my cult' speech later," I cut off Isaribi before she could regale Matsu with tales of violence for the sake of violence. "My room has my name on it, you can sleep in there. If the sun is down… _try_ to be quiet, I'm gonna be busy trying to keep Minaka from killing us all and I'll be better at that if I'm not sleep deprived."

"... no promises," Isaribi smirked at me, but gave a quick nervous look at Karasuba. She was actually being kind of devious. She was steadily pushing her boundaries, trying to find out where she stood in the pecking order and how submissive she needed to be. I wasn't normally a compassionate person, but it's hard not to care for someone directly bonded to your soul, and I'd never mistreat someone I cared for.

I'd let her be herself as much as I could, as long as it didn't endanger her or the rest of us.

XXXXXXX

 **I have but one thing to say… writer's block is a** _ **pain in the ass**_ **. I probably sat down in front of this chapter dozens of times, written a sentence or two, and then realized that I was doing something completely different and had stopped writing. But, finally, after a long wait, I believe that I have something I can post. So, update! And I hope that posting this doesn't kill my muse again because I do enjoy writing this and I hate leaving things half-finished.**

 **Anyone that can find the Mass Effect reference in this chapter gets a high-five and eternal glory.**

 **And can I just say that I never really realized how hard it was to juggle so many different personalities and characters. Truthfully part of why I've taken so long to write these latest chapters is because I'm trying to find screen time for everybody and still keep a fluid narrative flow. But, I guess practice makes perfect and as always feedback is appreciated as always.**

 **Anyways I hope to get the next chapter out on a more regular schedule, but we'll see if my writer's block is actually over yet.**


	22. Chapter 20: Hell Hath No Fury

**Yo, just wanted to clarify cause people commented, Isaribi is an OC Seikirei, a very big portion of the 108 from the show simply don't exist, so I picked a number and made one up. She went through like three complete remakes before I was satisfied with her personality and abilities, but eventually I got a mix that would contrast with my current cast of characters well. And I'm one of those people that knows waaaaaay too many references to all kinds of shows and everything so I'm gonna have fun writing a sarcastic nerd.**

 **And yeah, this chapter just kind of came out of nowhere, I posted the last one, and the next morning sat down, and just… started typing. And then this happened. I'm not complaining.**

 **Chapter 20: Hell Hath No Fury**

"You know, despite how scary it is to be living in the same room as the Black Seikirei, this is actually pretty cool," Isaribi commented as we sat in the penthouse, snacking. I was eating jerky made from humans, but the two Seikirei had a fruit dish and some kind of sugary candy stuff. Karasuba had volunteered to help take some weight off my shoulders, and she was working on reorganising the command structure of Carneval to compensate for all the officers that were killed during the last attack, and so that each division would have a higher capacity for autonomy. She was surprisingly good at the administrative job, but then again she'd been leading troops her whole life. I, on the other hand, was studying the building plans for MBI tower and trying to guess if there were any nasty surprises inside we needed to worry about. Neither me nor Karasuba reacted to Isaribi's words. We'd found very quickly that actually responding to her would only encourage her, and there was no way to get her to shut up. Except for, you know, killing her or ripping out her vocal chords but she was kind of my Seikirei and I'd experience the pain too, that and she was actually pretty easy to get along with when I wasn't trying to get work done. Most of the Seikirei that I knew of had extreme personality quirks, and while Isaribi was a video game fanatic and obsessively studied the lore of every piece of fiction she came across, that wasn't in itself very strange, humans did it all the time.

"I mean, leather seats, room service, wonderful view of the skyline, minions at our beck and call, why I feel just like a princess!" she continued, still trying to get us to talk. It didn't work. I checked on Karasuba's mind to make sure that she wasn't too bothered by Isaribi's babbling, but when I did I stifled a laugh before it could show on my face. She had earbuds hidden underneath her hair and she couldn't hear Isaribi talking in the first place. She was listening to "dark choral" music, you know the kind of ominous chanting songs that games have for a final boss fight.

Oh… Isaribi was rubbing off on me already. The corruption has begun.

"And the best part is I'm rapidly losing my belief that the people I'd been most scared of in my life are actually decent fighters because all I've seen them do is work desk jobs," she said flatly. She pouted when I refused to rise to the bait.

"There," Karasuba broke her silence, "now the humans have people to tell them what to do again." she put down the tablet she was working on and stood up, pulling one earbud out. Isaribi saw her holding the earbud, and gaped. I snickered. Kara rolled over on her chair, grabbing a piece of pineapple from the platter between the two Seikirei, popping it in her mouth lazily. Kara apparently admired pineapples for fighting back even when defeated, because of the whole thing where pineapples act like a mild acid on whatever eats them. I thought it was cute. Watching her eat, however, reminded me that my own mouth was empty, so I grabbed another piece of jerky and munched absently on the end, marking a spot near the bottom of MBI tower's blueprints where there was a supposedly empty space. It could've just been a support structure, but it also could've been an elevator to underground levels.

"So what do humans even taste like?" Isaribi asked, eyeing the meat in my mouth with cautious fascination.

"Blood," Kara answered immediately.

"Oh, what a shock," Isaribi gasped dramatically, "no really thought, what's it like for ghouls?"

"I mean I don't have anything to compare it to, I've never eaten anything else. I've tried human fast-food once or twice I think, but it just tasted bitter-ish. I've got human memories in my head, but human and ghoul taste buds work differently so normal food flavors can't really be used to explain what ghouls taste. Human food's supposed to taste rotten or stale to normal ghouls but I'm special," I informed her, willing to satisfy her curiosity. She blinked.

"You've never tried _real_ food before?" she sounded stunned. "Here," she grabbed a green apple off the platter and held it out to me. I eyed it hesitantly. She deadpanned, "Are you seriously afraid of an apple?" I scowled, and took it from her hand irritably. I held it in front of my mouth, and quickly took a bite, hoping to get it over with quickly, like ripping off a band-aid.

It was… sweet, and tart… and bitter, and… good? I blinked, and took another, bigger bite.

"Huh," I looked at the apple like it was an infiltrator. "Pass me something else." Isaribi had an expression between smug and confused, but she gave me a banana next. I pinched the bottom and pulled it apart, and then went to take a bite of it. I paused when I heard snickering, and saw Isaribi chuckling at me with a childish smirk. I looked at the banana in front of my face, and rolled my eyes, and took a bite.

I spit it out, it was like biting into mud.

"Okay, so bananas suck," I tossed the half-eaten banana back onto the platter where its horrid taste wouldn't offend me any longer, and took another bite of the apple. "Apples are good. That makes absolutely no sense."

"So what's it like?" Isaribi prompted.

"Alright, the apple is kind of like really really sugary sour coffee, but without the taste of coffee," I informed her. She face-palmed. "And humans… the closest that I could compare it too would be meat lover's pizza. It's like biting into pure satisfaction, the texture is perfect and the savory flavours combine into a wonderful mix of meaty, fatty, greasy goodness. Bones are like the crust, a crunchy side-dish that has a lot of the same flavors but is different enough to be a separate treat from the meat."

"... so people taste like pizza?" she said out loud, and smiled in a half-amused, half sickened way, "well that's good to know."

"Seikirei are like cake," I continued, "they're so sugary sweet with so much magic infusing their flesh that the taste of it overpowers everything else, and the rush of magic that follows is pretty similar to a sugar high."

"Oookay, a little more than I asked for…" she grimaced a little. I shrugged. Then I finally had a stretch of undisturbed, blessed silence.

That was broken by Matsu coming through the doorway at a full sprint, yelling something as loud and fast as she could.

"Matsu! Slow down," I tried to get her attention through her panicked stammering. She paused, taking a breath to calm herself enough to be understandable.

"... Miya's here, she wants to talk to you," she said, "and she's got her sword with her and she's really really angry." I sat there for a moment.

"Shit," I summed up the situation.

I elected to ride the elevator down to the ground floor to meet Miya so I had a moment to run my mind over the situation. We'd just duked it out with MBI and trashed a portion of the city, Miya didn't have Matsu any more so she could only make guesses as to what happened. Either A, she guessed that it was MBI's fault, or B, she thought that it was our fault, and while it would be great if I could aim her at Minaka and let her go, the prospect of Miya being armed and angry at us was nerve-wracking. If she was still pretending to be a helpless widow I would be less concerned, but Matsu said she had her sword at her hip. If Miya was going to be serious, then things were going to be _serious_.

There was a reason that even Karasuba never pissed off the 01.

"So… by Miya did Matsu mean _that_ Miya?" Isaribi asked, standing in the elevator with us. I was pacing back and forth in front of her and Karasuba, while Kara was idly running her fingers over the hilt of her sword, staring straight in front of her. Mentally, Kara was sending me waves of reassurance. Yes, I was nowhere near being able to match Kara in a fight, and Kara couldn't match Miya, but with Kara and I together she was confident that my magic could give us the edge we needed to overcome Miya. I was going over Karasuba's memories of Miya in combat and I… wasn't so sure.

"Yes, the 01 is pissed and in our lobby," I confirmed for Isaribi.

"Ah," she nodded. "I'll just be standing behind you hoping she doesn't notice me." I snorted with a dark smirk.

"You know what I don't blame you," I checked the floor number, we were a bit past halfway down. "But the last time I was face to face with her, I kind of said 'fuck off' to her in her own home."

"That probably sounded like a lot better idea at the time," she snarked. I opened my mouth to respond, but I was interrupted by the doors opening to show the back of the lobby. I closed my mouth, and led my girls out of the elevator.

Miya was waiting just through the front door, and she had a blank expression on her face. However, she had her hand resting on her sword in a manner that was eerily similar to Karasuba. I approached at a normal pace, diverting a portion of my attention to making sure that my walk was as natural as possible, giving none of my nervousness away. Kara's grip tightened on her sword, and I gently put a hand on hers, giving her a pleading look. She sighed, and reluctantly relaxed, losing her outward tension.

"So, can I help you?" I opened, hoping that I could figure out what the hell Miya wanted and get her far away from me again. I made eye contact, but didn't smile or do anything that she might mistake as an attempt to lie to her. She turned her head, and looked straight at me as I spoke. The moment I finished, she seemed to… blur, and her sword passed through my forehead. The sonic wave caused by her _casually breaking the sound barrier_ slammed into my body just after her sword did, throwing me physically backwards and splattering me against the back wall of the lobby, and crushing said wall of the lobby like the fist of God had placed its judgement on the building. A hole fifteen feet wide was punched all the way through the solid walls of the building, and I landed in pieces just like the rubble that was left of the wall. The building above groaned precariously as its weight distribution changed suddenly.

"Fine, Karasuba you get your fight!" I shouted, flying back together and reattaching all my scattered parts like time was flowing in reverse. Kara immediately drew her sword, and swung at Miya, Isaribi took a step back, and a haze of dust and small pieces of rubble rose to swirl around her. I kept my distance, because even then I still wasn't fully recovered, and my reserves of power were only about two-thirds full after having to heal myself from catastrophic damage yet again.

Karasuba's blade met Miya's, and the clash of fine steel made another airburst shockwave that made the building shudder. The thing about Miya and Karasuba was that their physical strength was beyond what a mundane blade could handle according to normal physics. They could still use their steel blades because their power reinforced the blades they wielded, otherwise Miya would never be able to swing a katana and make a blade of pressure strong enough to cut through _battleships_ and not have the katana shatter. When Karasuba's steel katana met Miya's, it was a contest between them. They were both incredibly skilled, Karasuba more so because she still trained and practiced. However, regardless of Karasuba's skill advantage, Miya was simply _more powerful_. Karasuba's blade lost, shattering into so many shards of steel like a glass pane hit with a brick. That was okay, Karasuba's second blade came after, and the Quinque cleaved through Miya's steel blade as if it wasn't even there.

Miya didn't even falter, responding my reaching out with her off-hand and _slapping_ Karasuba's Quinque away with the back of her hand, sending Kara's blow out wide and into the ground, leaving her completely open to attack. Miya moved to stab Karasuba with the jagged remaining half of her katana.

She was hit with what seemed like a railgun-shotgun. Miya was flung out of the building, crashing through the opposite wall followed by the other tiny pieces of debris shot at her by Isaribi.

"Mommy, how did you meet the 01? Oh, I blew her through a wall," Isaribi commented to herself.

"I thought you controlled mist," I looked at her, handing Kara the knife-quinque I kept on myself for her to use in her off-hand.

"No, I'm the _Cloud_ Seikirei. Anything that can form a cloud I can control," Isaribi clarified.

"... you control _particulates_ ," I realized.

"Yep. And the internet as been so helpful finding all kinds of ways to use them," she nodded, surprisingly business-like in a combat situation.

"Alright, before Miya gets back here we need to trap her away so she doesn't bring the base down on our heads, cloud her eyes so she can't see us coming. I'll try and hit her with lightning. Kara, be ready to stop her from cutting us in half," I directed, and my girls nodded. Isaribi's eyes went unfocused, and she gestured with her hands. I heard faint rattling noises as pebbles, dust, mist, and all kinds of small objects lifted off the ground and started flying through the air towards the direction Miya went.

"Adaptability and range, man I know how to pick 'em," I shook my head, and ran out of the building after Miya, Karasuba on my heels.

XXXXXXX

Isaribi did her job _wonderfully_. She made a massive cloud of objects composed of everything smaller than a walnut. I could see dust, water droplets, gravel, coins, cigarettes, paperclips, even a few stray pieces of plastic silverware, and virtually all kinds of tiny debris that you'd find in the middle of a city. Not only did the cloud block vision, but all the objects moving around collided with each other and the buildings and cars and things around them, making a constant rattling sound that deafened everything inside. Miya probably couldn't see hear, or smell a _thing_. The cloud was also moving slowly back towards Carneval's base, but at a bit of an angle, probably because Miya got caught in the cloud before she could properly orient herself in the right direction. That or her sense of direction got ruined by the writing mass of objects circling her at high speeds. It was like a sandstorm whirling around her. The civilian humans had dropped whatever they were doing and were running for the hills as fast as they could, leaving cars in the middle of the road and bags left lying where they fell.

Me and Kara stood on a ledge above the cloud, above it and far enough to the side that we could duck behind the ledge before Miya could see us if the cloud did disperse. I held up a hand, and concentrated on pulling electrons from the environment around me. Tiny sparks of stating started to arc around my fingers. Finally, I mentally pulled the trigger, and a bolt of hot plasma shot from my hand towards the center of the cloud. The theory was that despite Miya's magical strength, she still followed the rules of biology like other Seikirei, and lightning would screw with her nervous system and might paralyze her in the best case, or at least hamper her coordination if things didn't go perfectly. I was rewarded with a faint yelp over the sound of the rattling storm below us, and I smiled viciously. Then a blade of pressure blasted out from the cloud in my general direction, and with raw blasts of power like that you didn't have to aim. I'd know.

I dove backwards, and Kara swung her Quinque in front of her, trying to cut the blast wave to reduce its impact. Because of her efforts we were merely flung backwards across the roof from the air pressure, instead of blown to pieces by the impact. Isaribi's cloud was torn apart by the slash as well, and Miya lazily leapt up to the roof, staring at us with her katana's sheath in her hand held like a blade to replace her broken sword. If she wasn't trying to kill us I would admire her ingenuity.

"When you first arrived I believed you to simply be acting according to your nature," she spoke for the first time, _deigning_ to address me. "You need to eat humans to survive, and _she,_ " here she directed a hate-filled glare at Kara, "even held herself in check. It is obvious that my opinion of you was in error."

"What the hell did I do?" I demanded, readying another lightning bolt in my right hand and trying to buy time for it to properly charge without wasting too much more of my magic. My question seemed to catch Miya off guard, and she studied my expression.

"You… you honestly don't believe you've done anything wrong," she seemed to realize. She brandished her scabbard forward. "All the more reason to kill you, if you can slaughter my feathers and believe that you're entitled to do so."

"Hold on, they attacked us! They were killing all of the people I'm responsible for, was I supposed to just let them kill me?" I desperately tried to figure out what twisted impression of events she was believing in. Meanwhile small static sparks quietly snapped between my hands and the roof below me from where I was sprawled on my belly, craning my neck upwards to meet Miya's eyes. . Karasuba was standing over me, ready to defend me.

' _Get a line of water between me and Miya,'_ I mentally told Isaribi, and water droplets started moving along the roof, aligning between me and the 01's left foot.

"You're defending the humans that stood by and watched as MBI's scientists experimented on us, and reduced us to mere objects of curiosity and progress. I know where your subordinates came from, and I hold their lives in no value," Miya shook her head. At that moment, I understood that for all Miya's self-righteousness, she was no higher on the moral scale than Karasuba. Miya saw all of humanity as an extension of MBI. She obviously had a somewhat different opinion towards the Ashikabi, but that could easily be explained as her assuming that any human worthy of being an Ashikabi was _worthy of being an Ashikabi_ , and therefore worth her concern.

She was going to kill us for defending ourselves with lethal force against those who were already trying to kill us, because _of course_ if we were being attacked by so many Seikirei there was a good reason for it and we were the ones at fault.

This fight was only going to end with one of us killing the other.

Too bad for her, I was pretty bad at the whole 'dying' thing.

I placed my hands on top of the line of water droplets, and I saw Miya's eyes widen, but it was far, far too late for her to move. My lightning arced along the line of water droplets at the speed of light, and with us a mere ten feet or so apart, it might as well have been instantaneous. The full brunt of my lightning shot up through her foot and caused her to spasm wildly. Her hand crushed the scabbard she was holding, and she fell over when her leg locked and then bent as far as it could go. I immediately grabbed Kara's ankle and apparated us a safe distance away. I scrambled to my feet from a few rooftops distance, and saw Miya pull herself back to her feet, grimacing, but seemingly unharmed.

"God dammit what does it take to kill that bitch," I cursed. I'd hit her with lightning that could've boiled the blood of a normal human, and it _tickled_ her.

"... this is what I thought I could equal?" Karasuba murmured to herself.

"Dammit Kara," I hissed, punching her in the leg just hard enough to feel pain. "Existential crisis later, desperately try not to die now."

' _Blind her again'_ I told Isaribi, and in half a second another storm was screaming around Miya.

"I'm gonna teleport us behind her, try and stab her with a Quinque," I told Kara, and put my hand on her leg again. I felt Kara's mind harden, her broken self-confidence patched over by her faith in me.

It was the most touching thing anyone's ever done for me, but I didn't have the time to kiss her senseless for it.

Right as Miya popped Isaribi's newest cloud like a bubble, I teleported us, reappearing behind Miya with only a subtle popping sound. Unfortunately, it was enough to tip her off that we were there. Karasuba stabbed forward, and Miya acted instantly. Instead of turning to see what was coming, or twisting out of the way, Miya showed her inhuman talent for combat by jumping _forward_ , away from our reach. Her fast reaction was enough to save her from Karasuba's blade slipping between her ribs, but not enough to save her completely. The perfect edge of Karasuba's sword-Quinque caught on the skin, and traced a line down her spine as Kara tried to turn the stab into a slash across the muscles of Miya's back. Miya escaped, but red blood instantly started to ooze from the line on her back. I immediately apparated us away again, and scowled at the hit to my rapidly-diminishing reserves. We turned to Miya, and she moved to swing her sword-scabbard at us, her lips pursed in a thin line.

And then something surprising happened.

Instead of Miya producing another blast wave of power at us, she _flinched_ , and her attack failed to form properly. Instead of an overpowering wave of destruction, we were merely hit with a strong wind, not even enough to blow us backwards. All our eyes widened, and I saw tears build up at the corners of Miya's eyes.

"She's never been injured before," I spoke out loud, partly for Kara's benefit and partly as psychological warfare against Miya. "She has no idea how to handle pain because she's never been hurt, never had to fight through discomfort, never had to struggle." I smiled viciously. "Well, it seems the untouchable goddess has her own Achilles Heel, hmm?"

XXXXXXX

Touka sighed.

"You know I honestly expected ghouls to taste better than this," Nishiki commented.

"You thought cannibalism would be pleasant?" Ayato raised an eyebrow between bites, the meal below them an average ghoul, one they killed with essentially no effort. Touka snacked on an arm, trying her best to stay away from the flippant remarks of her brother and Nishiki.

"Well no, but I just didn't expect meat so similar to humans to taste like shit," Nishiki clarified.

"Are you guys really not worried about Zero?" Touka finally snapped.

"Chill out Touka," Kankeki said calmly, "Zero is our leader, he got us past the entire CCG before we even had magic, he'll take care of himself, and when we get back we'll handle MBI."

"We left him basically undefended," she folded her arms, her pride making her unwilling to submit to Kaneki's persuasion.

"He probably just got rid of us so he could bang Karasuba silly in private," Nishiki waved off her worries, "there's no way that he could run into any trouble this quickly."

"You're a pervert," she sighed a long, pained, resigned sigh.

XXXXXX

I thrusted forward viciously, and Karasuba smiled beatifically, her body tensing and responding to match my movements in a primal rhythm. We both grunted in exertion, our enhanced bodies sweating in spite of our incredible stamina as a result of our rough, violent motions. My Kagune slammed into the ground as Miya dodged, wincing badly as the motion aggravated the wound on her back. It was almost pitiful. She was an unconquerable titan, a juggernaut of epic proportions, but the moment she was _scratched_ she was reduced to a pale imitation of her real strength. She was like a child, completely unable to handle the pain.

Neither me nor Karasuba had any reservations about exploiting Miya's weakness.

We pressed forward, my Kagune attacking Miya in a wild storm of writhing razor-edges while Karasuba weaved through my attacks with the unnatural synchronization our linked minds gave us. However, even though Miya could barely move she was flinching and cradling her injury so badly, she still managed to fight us off. She was just that much stronger and faster than us. However, now me and Karasuba were the aggressors, and Miya was doing her best to not get killed by us.

The building we were standing on was quickly battered to pieces by the force of our feet crushing the roof beneath us, and my Kagune stabbing into it to help my agility. We spilled over back onto the street, Miya backstepping every bit of the way, dodging Karasuba's manic slashes and stabs with her two Quinque. I grabbed a sedan off the street by stabbing it with two of my Kagune's limbs, and hurled it at Miya, giving myself the leverage needed by stabbing my other Kagune into the ground like a spider. Miya dove underneath the car, and Kara jumped over it. Miya stumbled and fell to her belly, and doing so made her audibly whimper as her back flared with pain. Karasuba fell back down, her blade poised to stab through Miya's lung. Miya desperately threw herself to the side, actually screaming as her back wound touched the gritty asphalt, and Kara's blade stabbed into the ground, making a small crater from the pressure. Miya didn't get a break, she had to immediately dodge a small handful of pebbles rocketing towards her at extreme speed. The pebbles slammed into the asphalt and tore a craters into it like a shotgun. I followed up by hurling another lightning bolt at her. Miya managed to lean out of the way of the bolt itself, but stray branches of lightning still connected to her, and the lightning stimulated the nerves in her back and made her scream in pain again.

Miya couldn't attack back. To do so she had to swing her arms, and to do that would hurt her back. She was openly crying now, and her eyes were wide and dilated. I was pretty sure that this was the first time she was ever afraid of anything in her life.

Good, couldn't have happened to a more disgustingly self-righteous bitch.

"Got anything that could stop her wiggling away from me?" Kara asked, breathing hard from the exertion, but I could feel the ecstasy coursing through her mind from the fight. I thought about it for a moment, and my mind remembered something I'd picked up from one life I'd subsumed but never actually used.

"Yeah, keep her occupied," I told her simply, and held out a finger.

"My pleasure," she purred, and moved forward to keep the aggression on the 01, Isaribi helping her out with an imitation of my kagune made from clouds of broken glass shards.

I hoped that what I was about to try would actually work, considering it was actually supposed to be performed with a tool and not a finger, but I made an optimistic guess that the Rc cells in my finger would do the job well enough. Kara pushed Miya back, and Isaribi pinned her down in a whirling maw of glass, managing to nick Miya with a few shards and adding to Miya's predicament. Miya halted in place for one, brief moment, and I acted.

I drew a shape in the air with my finger, and spoke an incantation. My magic responded without me having to actively control it, leaping from my finger in an invisible projectile.

" _Petrificus Totalus,"_ I enunciated, making sure that I got each syllable correct, and each movement of my finger perfectly. The bolt of magic shot from my finger and because there was no physical sign of its existence, Miya never saw it coming. It hit her dead on, and her limbs locked together like a mannequin. She fell over, hitting the ground with a thump and a muffled sob as her jaw refused to move after she hit the ground back-first. Me and my Seikirei stood there motionless for a moment, still stuffed full of adrenaline and not prepared for the sudden ending of our fight.

' _Maybe lead with that the next time,'_ Isaribi sent to me, and I rolled my eyes. I was still stunned. That… was unlike any magic I'd ever used before. It wasn't just that I was pretending to use a wand and an incantation, it was that unlike everything I'd done before, it used so little magical power that I literally couldn't even feel the loss, and it was effective on the _01 Seikirei_. I'd assumed that the wizards were weak… but it seemed that I arrogantly assumed that I knew more about magic than them because they needed wands and I didn't…

I needed to go back over the memories I stole from that Auror and find out what I had overlooked.

"So… what now?" Isaribi said as she walked up to us, no longer hiding because the danger was over.

"Well we could kill her," Kara supplied helpfully.

"We'll call that option one," I huffed amusedly, "but I have a feeling that'd piss a lot of Seikirei off."

"Not to mention I'd kind of rather prefer to keep the matriarch of my species alive," Isaribi added. "Just a thought."

"Let's just bring her back to base and pull ourselves back together, we seriously need to talk about what you can actually do because apparently you're a lot more useful than your dossier implied," I snarked at Isaribi.

"Gee thanks," she countered back, smirking at the banter.

We froze when we heard a slow, dramatic clapping.

I turned and saw the worst case scenario in front of me. Minaka was standing a short distance away from us, clapping as if he was just entertained by gladiators fighting for his amusement. He was smiling smugly, and he was flanked by a pair of the masked-brand of Seikirei. The marks on their masks were hieroglyphs. He wasn't there a moment before.

"Bravo, bravo, Izanagi's creations truly were ahead of his time," he spoke, stopping his clapping to gesture toward me grandly, none of his childish antics present.

"Izanagi?" Isaribi said out loud, "the shinto deity?"

"The man responsible for the legend, yes, but I thought he left behind information for any magical blood in his ghouls?" Minaka's brow furrowed slightly, but he still looked pleased. "Hmm, the legacy must have been corrupted by time. Oh well, as nice as it would've been to regain some of his research mine is superior anyway."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded, my blood ice in my veins. I was inching closer to my Seikirei, hoping to apparate away.

"Ah, well, if you'll indulge me a little showmanship," he asked us politely, and then continued as if we'd responded, "long, long ago a man named Izanagi wanted to become immortal. He was a member of an organization dedicated to casting off the imperfections of being human. He created the Rc cell, an unequaled creation of alchemy even to this day. His wife was his first test subject, and thus the legend of Izanami, the queen of the undead arose. It's quite interesting how the passing of the ages warped the story into part of a religion."

Just then I snapped my arms out and touched Kara and Isaribi, and tugged on my magic, beginning to apparate out.

We hit a wall.

We snapped back into existence in exactly the same place, and all three of us immediately started coughing up blood, feeling like our organs had been squeezed and ruptured like overripe tomatoes.

Minaka tutted like a teacher chastising a student, and waved his finger in front of himself. "Now, now, we can't have you running away, can we? Not when there's so much to _learn_." He smiled, stepping up in front of us and grabbing me by the chin and pulling it upward so I was looking him in the eye. His smile was absolutely _predatory_. "After all, to naturally pair with Karasuba, your soul must be _quite_ unique."

"Fuck you," I spat, splattering blood over his face because I was still bleeding internally. He dropped my chin, and sighed. He pulled off one of his white gloves, and wiped the blood off his face. Then, he grabbed me again, this time his fingers going around my throat. His grip was surprisingly strong, and definitely _far_ stronger than a human should ever be capable of. I briefly thought about forcing myself to attack him, but I'd probably break my neck and worsen my internal injuries in the process and my regeneration was still slowed to a near-halt by magical residue from whatever magical barrier that stopped me from apparating us away. This situation was already dangerous enough, I couldn't risk crippling myself any further.

"I'm sorry, was I misunderstood? I was complimenting you," he continued speaking, like he was putting a show on for our non-existent audience. His voice was still cheerful, but the fingers angrily wrapped around my throat indicated otherwise. "Karasuba and Miya used to be one soul," he explained, and we froze. "They were a murderer, and it was easy for me to collect the soul after its old body was executed. You see my research specializes in modifying the soul, and I needed examples of each of the soul's… well, the soul equivalent of vital organs. I split the soul in two, and attached each piece to a homunculus body. I honestly never expected them to naturally develop the abilities they did, I simply expected them to become insane humans." He shrugged, "it was a pleasant surprise to find them bending steel with their bare hands. I never expected to find a way to so easily overcome the limits of human flesh." He saw Kara and Isaribi's poleaxed expressions, and laughed. "Yes, you're not really aliens, just very… _customized_ humans. And you, Karasuba," he smiled at her viciously, "when I created Miya I cut away all the imperfections in her soul. I cleaved away guilt, sloth, envy, self-doubt, everything that would prevent her from achieving absolute perfection. And then, all of those pieces, the _trash left over_ ," he tossed me aside with a flick of his wrist and bent his knees to look her in the eyes, " _that,_ my dear, is what became _you_."

I felt as Kara's mind was completely overwhelmed by emotion, and she collapsed, actually falling unconscious from internal blood loss, exhaustion, and from the intensity of the whirling mass of negative emotion Minaka's words caused. Minaka frowned at her limp body. "Of course I still expected _some_ greatness from you, after all negativity can be great sources of willpower and inner strength, but neither you nor Miya's soul agreed to stay in their states of perfection. You… grew, every experience you went through in life built your souls back up until you were whole again. You were excellent prototypes, and the data collected in your infancy was valuable, but in the end you were merely that, half-formed experiments that were never meant to achieve greatness." He sneered at her, and my heart leapt at the sight, Kara lying unconscious and helpless as Minaka stood over her, holding all the power. For once I was actively trying to force myself to heal by running magical power through my body, but whatever magic that prevented me from apparating us was resisting my efforts, fighting actively against my regeneration and keeping me crippled.

"And _you,_ " he turned back to me, "You come here to taunt me with the perfection that I so desperately searched for. Seikirei are all created from pieces of souls, so I had them bond with humans that were primarily made of the missing pieces that they needed to become whole. Your soul is everything that I've been looking for, the pieces that Karasuba was missing. Of course, you being a ghoul is somewhat of a surprise, because not even Seikirei are immortal like you are, and I would be remiss if I lost the opportunity to study you before harvesting your soul." He reached into a pocket and pulled out something like a rubic's cube, if a rubic's cube was made of solid gold and was a dodecahedron with triangular sides instead of an actual cube. He twisted it, rotating on of its pieces to a new place, and a shimmering barrier flashed in the sky, a massive glowing dome over the entire city.

"Now, we can have our experiment in a controlled environment," he put away the gold thing and pulled out another object, a diamond with arrays of runes inlaid in its surface in gold. His other hand flicked, and a wand slipped into his hand. "And what a better way to gain data on you than combat?" He stepped over to Miya where she laid immobilized by my spell. He flicked his wand at her, and the magic holding her in place released. She immediately scrambled away, trying to put distance between herself and Minaka. He didn't let her get far.

"Since you seem to know about western spellcasting, I believe you'll recognize this one," Minaka declared.

" _Imperio,"_ he hissed, and Miya stilled, her eyes fading to a blank glassy-stare. Minaka turned to smile at me.

"I believe you'll find that you can apparate about the city now, I'll give you a ten-second head start," he taunted me, letting a bit of his usual childish antics show through the vicious purr he'd been using the whole time.

Without any other options, I grabbed Kara and Isaribi, and snapped away from the street, as Miya stood up, her injuries no longer bothering her in the slightest.

"Miya," Minaka crooned, " _hunt."_

XXXXXXX

 **And so it begins**

 **EDIT: Waberjack pointed out that Zero could've attacked Minaka while he was holding him by the throat. I forgot to include the reason why Zero didn't, so here's the edit to put that in. Thank you, Waberjack!**


	23. Chapter 21: Rats In A Maze

**So I listened to battle/dungeon music from Dissidia Final Fantasy: Duodecim while writing this chapter, the mood was perfect.**

 **I've gotten mixed feedback about the last chapter because it was the first major breakaway from the events of Seikirei cannon. I'll state my opinion: if you want to read cannon again go read the manga, that's not what I'm here for. I pretty much tore Tokyo Ghoul's cannon events to pieces, and the rest of this fic will follow that trend. It will start close to cannon, because my characters haven't had a chance to affect things all that much, but as time passes the butterfly effect should start being pretty obvious.**

 **Minaka being a magic user and being powerful… I have an explanation for him, and it's directly related to what I'd consider to be the actual overarching plot of this fic. At the very beginning of things I wanted to have fun just killing him off like a joke, but having him be an actual threat made things fit together with his actual important to the said "over-plot." Yes, it was suddenly revealed without lots of details, but it's supposed to be like that. This is a first person story, not "third-person omniscient," and that's literally what it's called. Sit back, simmer in the tension a little bit, enjoy the adrenaline, and keep reading because I'm not going to have things just happen without a reason and the explanation will come.**

 **Chapter 21: Rats In a Maze**

I popped back into reality inside one of the MBI ammo vaults. I hoped that because they were so isolated we'd be at least a little bit safer than we'd be outside. I'd been gambling on Minaka's actions, only to find out that Minaka had been dealing the cards the whole time, and everyone knows that the dealer always wins.

I set Karasuba down gently. She was still unconscious, but she wasn't restful. I could feel her sleeping thoughts held in the grip of some nightmare incomprehensible to my conscious mind. Karasuba… Kara was my figure of unconquerable strength. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that there was always a bigger fish. Physically she was still bleeding internally, and I had no ability to heal her. She needed real medical help, but no mundane hospital would be able to help her. But that didn't matter yet because as long as we were trapped inside Shinto Teito she had no chance of getting the medical help she needed.

"Stay here, make sure she stays alive," I told Isaribi, and I apparated again, this time to Matsu.

Matsu was panicking, typing furiously on her monitors and mobilizing forces. The sound of me teleporting in made her flinch and whirl around, and she pulled a pistol from under a desk and held it out at me.

"Keep that ready," I cautioned her. "Don't call the others back from Kakurega, I don't want them killing themselves trying to get through the barrier around the city."

".. you're right," she nodded, dried tear tracks running down her face. "Miya's heading northwest, Minaka's apparated to the roof of his tower, he's _having tea_ and watching Miya through a magical spyglass."

"Shit," I cursed. Miya was heading straight towards where I'd placed Kara and Isaribi. My mind scrambled for options. I threw together a few plans and backup plans, each of them more desperate than the last. "Make sure this building stays standing," I instructed Matsu, and apparated again.

I appeared in the Carneval armory, rubbing my stomach as my internal injuries _finally_ healed, and got to work.

XXXXXXX

Miya was walking slowly, but surely, with the absolute confidence of the unequalled and the undead. I could hear the screams in every direction as the civilians panicked. The phone lines were down, and every way of contacting the outside world other than Matsu's link to Nishiki was inoperable. The barrier around the city was a translucent yellow, and only barely visible. Some of the people were praying. Some were rioting, and in general it was complete chaos. The mundane people probably thought it was the end of the world, or something like it. I met Miya on the streets before she could get anywhere near my girls.

I opened fire as soon as I had a line of sight with her. I would have no margin for error. Q-bullets designed for piercing the impervious defense of ghoul skin hurtled towards Miya, and the first of them actually hit her, grazing her left forearm and carving a red line across her pale flesh. She didn't even react. She leaned out of the way of the others, and I wasn't a good enough shot to keep my sights on her. Instead I threw the handgun away, and charged. In my right hand was IXA, and I was wearing an extremely crude vest with nothing under it and loose martial arts pants, no shoes, and a belt with a small collection of equipment. I needed to maximize flexibility and minimize the number of things she could grab, and the vest was an experimental creation of mine that I hoped would give me just a little bit of an edge.

She leaned forward and pushed off the ground, the air around her forming clouds from the rapid compression-decompression of the acceleration of her body, and the crack of a sonic boom rattled the buildings around us and pushed spikes of pain into my eardrums. I held IXA in front of me in shield form, and held my other hand ready with a single finger extended. Miya wasn't perturbed by the shield in the slightest, and simply stabbed in a gap between the shield's sections. Her blade pierced me and blew a hole six inches wide on the right side of my torso. I was expecting her to do so, however, and IXA responded to my will, shifting from a shield to segmented tendrils of Rc cells, which surrounded Miya and kept her from moving to either side. My left hand's finger twitched around in a frantic pattern, and a flash of light was flung from the tip of my finger towards her as I incanted _Bombarda Maxima_.

Miya swung her sword.

I was hurled backwards by the explosion of my _Bombarda_ and her sword shockwave combining into one blast. I held onto IXA, arcing over the the buildings as they were blasted apart underneath me by the rest of the attack. I held out my limbs and managed to get air resistance to put my feet underneath me by the time I landed.

Miya was already there, swinging her sword.

I vanished with the sharp crack of rushed apparition, and reappeared behind her, my Ukaku already firing at her. The supersonic shards of Rc cells were moving too fast for even her to dodge, and my speedy Kagune sank an inch deep into her flesh where the managed to hit, but didn't make it through bone. I might as well have hit a wall for how much Miya reacted. She turned, and swung her sword, the light glinting off my magenta-purple Ukaku shards from where they were sticking out of her body like spines on a cactus. I threw myself to the side, and only got caught by the edge of the blast, which only threw me several feet back and bruised the entire front of my body. I rolled to my feet and darted into an alley, breaking Miya's line of sight with me, and apparated again. I appeared inches in front of her face, IXA already thrusting towards her eye.

Miya swung her sword.

I was caught by the blade itself, and my left arm and a good portion of my chest simply vanished, and the rest of me was flung backwards, breaking the sound barrier as I went. My arm rapidly regenerated, sapping my reserves of power. However, before I hit the ground, I released my Kagune and apparated again. This time I appeared above Miya, hurtling towards her with all the speed given to me by the blow I'd taken, My Kagune lashing forward even faster than the rest of me.

Miya _vanished_.

I slammed into the ground, making a crater a foot deep from the force of my impact and pulverizing the bones in my legs. I ignored my wounds, letting them heal without my conscious input. I used my Kagune to move, throwing myself out of the way of yet another blast wave from Miya's sword. I shot more Ukaku shards at her, but she leapt over the projectiles, swinging her sword in midair. In defiance of Newtonian physics, the usual blast wave was fired from her sword, and I wrapped by Kagune around myself to ride the shockwave away from her and minimize damage, and yet her trajectory through the air didn't change. The moment her feet touched the ground, she pushed off, charging towards me again and reducing the asphalt to rubble behind her. I opened my Kagune back up, and opened my hands, throwing a grenade at her.

Miya swung her sword.

But the thing was, the grenade was black, with glowing red lines, and was named _Jumping Cactus_. When Miya's sword cut the grenade, it detonated, firing a storm of millions of barbed needles in every direction. I apparated out of the range of the needles, but Miya was hit broadside by the barrage, as was the ground and buildings around her. Each needle had a tiny thread connecting it back to the center, and the street looked like it was covered in red spiderweb. Miya ignored the needles and their strings, and charged towards me. She quickly reached the full length of the strings attached to the needles, and a rumbling groan shook the street. Instead of Miya being halted by the anchors holding her to the ground and buildings around her, _she ripped the environment apart and dragged it with her._

I cursed, and twisted to the side, and Miya passed me by. She might've kept going in spite of the weight dragging behind her, but the grace and timing of her attack was ruined, and I was able to get out of the way when the rubble she was dragging threw her balance off to the side. I cocked my fist back, and punched Miya in the jaw, Raw Magic erupting from my fist at the moment of impact and amplifying my punch's impact by several orders of magnitude.

Miya was flung away from me, crashing through the wall of a building, and the rubble attached to her followed her, crashing through the wall and probably hitting her on the other side too.

I didn't enjoy my victory, because there was _no way_ that she was killed by that. Miya stumbled back out of the building with a split lip as I charged forward, IXA in hand and ready to pierce her heart. Her empty hand shot forward and caught IXA as it neared her. I immediately let go of the handle and apparated away, just in time to avoid getting hit by another swordblast. Miya moved to step farther away from the building, and finally noticed the needles and the strings going from them attached to her skin. Expressionlessly, she dropped IXA and gathered the strings attached to her in her now-empty hand. With a sharp tug, she ripped the barbed needles from her skin, bringing small chunks of skin with them. She immediately started bleeding on virtually her entire front side, staining her red. She looked up, and swung her sword, slicing apart the car I'd flung at her.

The two more Quinque grenades I threw at her, one from either side arrived just after she completed her swing. They hit each other and detonated, spearing everything within ten feet with an uncountable number of barbed needles. Miya was blinded temporarily as the needles covered everything in sight. She swung her sword, and blasted the whole mess away from her, ripping the needles out of her body and further opening the front of her body to bleed. She blinked away the blood getting in her eyes, and stepped forward to find and attack me again.

She made eye contact just as I apparated away after pulling the trigger and firing an RPG at point blank range.

The RPG I'd used was a type 69 RPG, and I was using a high-explosive and incendiary version of ammo meant for attacking personnel or clearing overgrown landscape. It exploded with enough force to fling Miya into the building behind her a second time and set her hair on fire. I apparated back to the battlefield again with another RPG in my hands from our armory, and fired it at the hole in the building, where it exploded, furthering the destruction. The second RPG was the building's final straw, and it started to collapse as the incendiary round set it on fire. I dropped the spent RPG and jumped down to pick IXA back up, keeping my eyes on the building as it collapsed.

Flaming rubble burst outwards from it as Miya came charging at me, covered in blood and flames. I made a decision, and pulled magic from my Seikirei to bolster myself and keep myself in the fight. Miya was only the first round of this tournament, after all, and I couldn't afford to exhaust myself against her like I did the last time I fought against a strong opponent. At the same time, I couldn't pull too much. Karasuba was still injured, and if I exhausted her magical reserves on top of her body being injured then I had no idea if there'd be any more chance of helping her.

I swung IXA, filling the lance-blade with raw magic, meeting Miya's blow head-on. It was like a bomb had gone off, throwing debris in every direction and pressing the ground downwards in a crater from the pressure. I was flung backwards, my arms breaking in several places and IXA flying out of my hands, but Miya was unaffected. I stumbled to my knees, and stared at Miya, my body posture resigned and submissive. She stalked to me emotionlessly. The fire had spread from her hair and was starting to move across her face, distorting her feminine features and leaving behind a horrific blackened mask. She placed her hand on the back of my head, and almost lovingly pushed her sword through my heart.

I leaned my head forward and sank my teeth through her forearm, cleaving the limb from the rest of her near the elbow. It never would have worked if Miya was conscious, but then Miya wouldn't even be able to stand up in spite of the pain if she was.

Power flowed into me in a sugary overwhelming stream. Miya was powerful, far more powerful than any other being I'd ever seen before. I viciously tore the arm apart and swallowed it as fast as I possibly could. There was so much power in just her arm that when I ate it my magical core filled to capacity and then kept filling. I was bloated, and my body seized as my soul strained to contain the titanic amount of magic I'd just overfilled it with. I'd just wanted to get some magic back and cripple Miya, but I had no idea just how much magic was within the flesh of the 01. I needed to vent. Some of it was trickling to Kara and Isaribi, but I was holding it away from them because magic violently flowing into them might hurt them. With all my efforts directed towards keeping the violent tides of magic away from my girls, it tore out of me in angry streams, literally splitting my skin in glowing jagged lines as some of it escaped. I opened my eyes, and saw Miya preparing to strike. I directed everything I had into directing the power ripping me apart from the inside out, and I threw my hand forward. Overcharged with magic as I was, I was fast enough to act before Miya could strike. A torrential beam of white plasma leapt from my hand, vaporising the ends of my fingers as it left my body. The lightning flashed between me and Miya, and the thunderous boom of superheated air exploding outwards as it rapidly expanded and the blinding flash of light shined brighter than the sun whited my vision out completely.

XXXXXXX

MBI's mundane soldiers approached Carneval's headquarters in orderly lines. The civilians ran from them screaming, but they didn't react, knowing that it was because Carneval had been slandering their reputation. When they saw the building, they opened fire, ridding the building with bullets and shattering the glass doors. They didn't stop marching, walking straight through the front doors and pulling out their MBI flamethrowers made specifically for taking on superhuman opponents. They lined up, ready to start torching the building, when small flashes of light accompanied the sound of small objects hurtling through the air. The soldiers paused when their flamethrowers jumped in their hands from being struck.

"... the fuck?" one asked, staring at the silver spoon sticking out of his weapon's firing mechanism.

"I'd appreciate it if you stopped making messes, as I will be the one that will have to clean them up," a voice spoke out, and the whipped their eyes as one to see a young girl standing across the lobby from them. She was wearing a perfectly groomed suit with coat-tails and white gloves. She was the perfect picture of a butler, or high-class servant. The soldiers had been briefed about the species Carneval was made of, however, so they didn't assume that the girl's looks would match her combat ability. This was the army of the company that handled the Seikirei, after all.

They dropped their now-useless flamethrowers and readied their assault rifles, flicking the safeties off. They didn't have Q-bullets like the Ghoul Investigators did, but they were told that their guns would work all the same. The girl visibly sighed.

"Well, I did attempt diplomacy, I'd apologize in advance for what I'm about to do to you all, but since it's going to be me that cleans after your rotting corpses I'm afraid I'm not feeling very charitable towards you," she took a step forward, and spread her hands outward silver knives held between each finger. The soldiers fired.

A few minutes later, the shooting had stopped, and MBI's mundane soldiers were lying in a scattered pile, silver cutlery sprouting from locations on their bodies vital for survival.

"What… what are you?" the last soldier gasped, eight knives slipped between his ribs and into his lungs.

"I…" the girl turned back to him, taking off her gloves and exchanging them with new ones from her pocket that didn't have little red splatter-marks on them, "... am one _hell_ of a butler."

XXXXXXX

I blinked the spots out of my eyes, and gasped, my soul aching, but stable now that I'd vented the majority of the power that was eating away at me. I fell to my hands and knees, pulling Miya's sword from my chest and letting my many wounds heal. I looked up.

Miya stood before me, in all her fallen, damaged glory. There was a mark on her chest charred black where the final lightning blast had passed through her body, the flesh there an act of rebellion against the titanic blast of power that had been enough to literally vaporise me if I came into contact with it.

But it was enough. It had passed through her heart, and her heart had stopped.

When Miya's corpse fell over, it seemed to do so slowly, her unseeing eyes staying on mine as it lurched sideways, and then collapsed forwards, landing on the ground with a tiny sound of puffing air that sounded startlingly loud in the silence. I crawled forward, and tugged at her remaining arm. I stared at it.

"... small bites," I mumbled, my ragged soul half-conscious and dazed. I bit off the tip of a finger, and felt my reserves of power fill back up. It definitely wasn't healthy to be filling myself back up after what I'd just done, but I didn't have a choice. After topping myself off after eating Miya's hand up to the wrist, I stumbled to my feet, and breathed heavily, wiping the blood around my mouth from my messy eating with my hand. I stepped forward uncertainly, and then kept going, heading towards the center of the city. I ran into a moped abandoned on the streets, and I set it right-ways up. I sat on the seat, and started it, riding it towards the center of the city. I would need everything I could bring with me, and apparating there might drop me into a trap.

I'd run the rat maze, now I needed to kill the rat-keeper to escape the cage.

XXXXXXX

"Hmm," Minaka hummed disappointedly, "well, it's not completely unexpected, I was never particularly skilled with that spell, illusions and memory modification is so much more effective…" He sipped his tea one last time, and placed it down on the table next to his chair, still looking through the scrying-glass that was displaying Zero's battered form approaching MBI tower. He looked at the gold-encrusted diamond, which was still attuned to Zero after he met the young ghoul, and it would remain attuned to him until Minaka purged it of the magic he'd gathered from the spell residue Zero had left behind in his first fight with the strongest of the first generation of Seikirei. He picked up the diamond and handed it to the Hieroglyph-generation Seikirei standing next to him.

"Make sure that soul trap stays completely undamaged or I'll force you to live as an undead frog for the next hundred years," he commanded, and stood from his chair, stepping past the scrying-glass and looking out over the skyline of his city. "Apotheosis… may not be so far out of man's reach," he murmured to himself, smiling subtly. Suddenly, he clapped his hands twice, "Alright then, let's prepare for our guest to arrive!"

XXXXXXX

In the headquarters of the Japanese magical law enforcement division, the office worker that was in charge of watching the monitoring charms that tracked spell activity across Japan noticed that Shinto Teito had vanished from the map, completely resisting all external observation attempts. The worker went to his superior, and pointed out that the city had gone dark, but he was simply told to go back to his post.

"Minaka bought that territory, he's allowed to have privacy if he wants to have it. There's only humans living within that city, and they're not our responsibility."

XXXXXXX

The rock Nishiki threw at the barrier surrounding Shin Tokyo vaporised with a sibilant hiss the moment it came into contact with the translucent dome of light.

"Ouch, yeah, don't want to touch that," he cringed.

"Fuck!" Touka screamed, and kicked at a tree, causing the wood to explode into splinters and sawdust, and the rest fell over with a crash. The others just tightened their lips, all of them worrying for the young boy that'd earned their loyalty.

"Guys… I have a bad idea," Kaneki spoke up.

XXXXXXX

Another office worker, this one a traffic monitor for a news channel, saw as thousands of cars turned around along the highways into…

...As thousands of cars turned around at the end of the dead-end highway. Why was a highway a dead end anyways? He wrote up his report, tracing the worst areas of traffic on a map, his mind completely unable to notice the dot next to his hand labeled "Shinto Teito."

XXXXXXX

As humiliating as it was for a big bad ghoul like me to ride around on a moped, I didn't let it bother me too much. I did my best to keep my breathing calm, and my mind even calmer. I felt like a sweater stretched out past its breaking point and then allowed to shrink back down. I felt like some of the threads holding me together had snapped, to continue the allegory. I was leaking magic now, just a little bit, but the sensation was foreign to me because I could always hold every last drop of magic I had.

I crossed over a bump in the road, and my moped lilted to the side dangerously, and then corrected itself.

I had a handful more of the _Jumping Cactus_ grenades to use, but all of the other equipment I'd prepared in the armory was probably beyond my reach unless I was willing to risk the strain of apparating in my ragged state. And I had my final backup plan hidden away in my gut. I was lucky that it hadn't gone off in my fight with Miya given all the lightning I'd used. I was lucky that Miya still had weaknesses while under the _Imperious_. I was lucky a whole bunch of times, and I was hoping that karma didn't screw me over when I was trying to kill Minaka.

MBI tower loomed over the heart of Shinto Teito, over sixty stories of gleaming glass and steel. Even from the several blocks distance that I was at I could feel the mammoth amount of magical power flowing upward through the building and into the barrier surrounding the city. The tower had to have been built over a nexus of ley lines, but even then the titanic amount of power being directed was staggering. MBI tower was obviously the seat of Minaka's power, in more ways than one.

"...Welcome to my parlour, said the spider to the fly," I chuckled morbidly. I pulled up to the building, and got off the moped, allowing it to fall back down on its side like I found it. I stepped closer to the building, literally able to feel physical vibrations from the magic surging upward through it like an actual geyser of magic.

The front doors opened, and two of the masked Seikirei stepped out, going to either side of the entrance and holding their arms out like servants welcoming a noble. I stared at them, and looked through the doorway, seeing nothing but the unassuming lobby of the building. If I was in Minaka's position I would've booby trapped the fuck out of the tower, there was no way that I was going in there if I was _invited_. I turned from them cautiously, and eyed the other skyscrapers adjacent to the structure, and my Rinkaku slithered out from under my vest. I mentally thought about Isaribi forcing me to do a Doctor Octopus impression with her in a Spiderman costume as I rose above the ground, my Rinkaku stabbing into the steel and concrete supporting the wall of the building across from MBI tower. I climbed swiftly, my impossibly sharp limbs able to find purchase on the slick surface by simply lancing into it at a downward angle for leverage. I _could've_ tried doing it on MBI tower, but if I thought the inside was trapped, then deliberately damaging the tower was probably equally dangerous. It only took me a few tens of seconds to make it up the fifty or so stories of the building, and then one strong _heave_ to fling me away from it and across the gap to rise above the edge of MBI tower's roof.

Minaka was already looking right at me, with an insulted frown on his face. I landed smoothly on the surface of the tower's flat roof, and quickly ran my eyes over everything I could see. The roof was completely flat except for the building's vents and air conditioning units, and the top of the stairway that led down into the building's lower floors. Minaka was standing with his arms crossed behind his back, with a fancy leather chair with a table next to it. A massive lens of glass was floating off to his side, which was displaying an image of me. A trio of the masked Seikirei were standing wordlessly behind him.

I could feel the rushing magic roaring upward through the whole area. It was like an overheated sauna. Warm, relaxing, but not really comfortable.

"Well, I suppose chivalry really has died, if my hospitality can be so easily slighted," Minaka pursed his lips, looking at me condescendingly. "Then again, you are a base creature raised in a primitive environment of darwinism and debauchery."

"I am going to kill you, and spear your corpse on a lance in front of MBI tower for the whole fucking world to admire," I told him. If we were going to do shameless posturing and banter I'd oblige him for now. Every moment I stole, every word he spoke without acting, was an opportunity for me to recover a little further, and learn just a little more about Minaka's personality, get just a little closer to finding out what _his_ blind spot was.

"I believe you'll find that somewhat challenging when you no longer have a body to act with," he countered. "I must, however, give credit where it is due, I did not honestly expect you to survive the 01. Your resourcefulness is impressive."

"I'm good at killing things," I shrugged, my Kagune still poised to defend me. I noticed that the golden dodecahedron was sitting on the table. It had no marks on it, so I didn't know how it worked, but if I could get my hands on it I _just might_ be able to get the barrier around the city down and let my reinforcements in. I wasn't subtle enough with my eyes, thought, and Minaka noticed where I was looking.

"Ah, the nexus key, not quite my most radical invention, but it was somewhat challenging forcing so many enchantments to co-exist in such close proximity. One little golden object, able to control an interlocking ward scheme over a 2000 square kilometer area. My little Apple of Eden," he turned around, showing me his back and picking up the 'nexus key' to admire it with the smile of a proud parent looking at their child. "It took a few attempts to stop the power of the ley lines from destroying it, but-"

I cut him off by attacking his exposed back.

My Kagune were blocked by a glowing barrier of power, two of the three masked Seikirei standing between me and Minaka, their hands outstretched, obviously creating the barrier. My Kagune, the weapon created to pierce all magical barriers, skittered off the wall of power like a thrown wooden spear impacting a steel wall. The barrier contained more raw power in it than my maximum reserves, ten times over. It was… it was _impossible_.

"My hieroglyph-generation models weren't created with my original goal in mind," Minaka gestured to the two girls still holding up the barrier dividing the roof in two. "You see the one most obvious weakness in every magic-wielder in existence is that their reserves of power are _limited_. When I create my Seikirei, I cut away pieces of the soul, and for my hieroglyph Seikirei I intended to create my… well," he laughed, "my royal guard, so to speak. They don't posses magical cores, but the still posses the conduit that allows them to draw upon magic and channel it. I had to remove everything from them, everything but that conduit to get them to work, and they had to bond with a master immediately upon creation to prevent their souls from recovering what I'd pruned away. When they have nothing left to them at the core of their being, but the ability to channel magic, they're able to do that very, _very_ well. Here, where the raw power of a leyline nexus fills the very air we breathe, they're able to use as much power as I want them to."

He gestured his hand, and the girls stepped back, lowering their hands and letting the barrier fall.

"Of course, since I completely removed everything that makes up a conscious mind, they're little more than another form of magical focus, I have to use the soul link to tell them what to do or they're little more than mannequins," he stepped back up to the front, caressing the face of one of the Seikirei gently. The Seikirei didn't move or react, exactly like a lifeless doll. "But they enjoy it, after all, what greater joy is there than fulfilling the purpose for which you were created?" He turned back to me, none of the Seikirei moving.

"So you can use an unlimited amount of magical power through your fancy fetish-dolls?" I summed up what he'd told me, analyzing what he'd given away. If he had to micro-manage all of the hieroglyph Seikirei for them to act, then he'd probably be helpless in his real body while doing so. I also now knew that trying to fight him in a battle of attrition would be pointless because he could simply have his Seikirei draw power from the ley lines and then feed it to him. I would have to kill him by outsmarting him, because I would never be able to overpower him. That was not going to be easy.

"Crudely put, but essentially yes," he drawled poshly. I waited, but he didn't say anything else. Trying to get him to keep talking, I changed the subject.

"But what the hell do you want with me anyways? If you want immortality all you need to do is become a ghoul and you're set?" I demanded.

Minaka laughed.

"Immortality actually isn't all that hard to achieve nowadays," he chuckled, "the world's studies into the soul have long ago crossed the threshold that allowed for the development of things like phylacteries, and there are multiple ways to migrate to a new body. What I want is _power_." He stepped forward, again taking his eyes off me to gesture out into the city. "Here in this city I am a living god. I own this land, and the people on it live at my discretion. I have access to unlimited magical might through the ley lines, and my company gives me access to all the resources and wealth I could ever desire. But," he whirled back around at me, making my Kagune twitch in agitation. "If I were to ever leave, would I bring all that power with me?"

"The group that Izanagi was a part of, it was called Apotheosis, a word that refers to the 'process by which a mortal ascends to divinity.' Back during his time immortality was the symbol of divinity, the Greek gods were distinguishable from mortals by their inability to die, even when their physical bodies were destroyed. They were in actuality the first liches, and the stories of mortals dying instantly when witnessing their "divine forms" were actually because the so-called gods needed to devour the souls of others to maintain their control over their bodies, as their own souls were no longer able to animate them." He pointed at me. "Izanagi made something better, you are unable to die because you can heal yourself from any wound as long as you have the power, you do not require sustenance to survive, and you do not suffer the damages of age. But you are still limited. If pushed far enough, even your reserves of power will run dry and you will perish just as the so-called gods of the greeks."

"So you want to become a god?" I stated, feeling a little overwhelmed despite the tension.

"Don't we all?" Minaka smiled gently, like he was teaching a lesson to a grandchild, "is it not the greatest wish of every living being to reign unchallenged over their surroundings, unmatched in might and unequalled in glory?"

"I think most people are just trying not to die by being hit by a bus or something just as pitiful," I grimaced. I had a new plan of attack, and I was only going to get one chance at it.

I threw aside my uncertainty, and I charged, lancing towards Minaka with my Kagune kept at the ready. The same two Seikirei moved to form another barrier, but I put my hands to my belt, and threw another two _Jumping Cactus_ grenades. The barrier formed, and the grenades it it.

Magical ghouls are a superior breed, that is unquestionable. They don't need to eat humans to survive, and they don't need anything but their own soul and magic to keep living. Their regenerative powers are unmatched by normal ghouls, and they're able to bend the laws of physics to their will. However, when a ghoul becomes magical, they sacrifice the innate resistance to magic that non-magical ghouls all have. Rc cells devour magic. When a ghoul is magical, their body is already filled with power, so spells attacking them function as normal. However, non-magical ghouls' Rc cells are starved of power, and any magic that comes into contact with them is immediately devoured.

For a split second, the barrier that was erected between me and Minaka failed, and the grenades burst into flame as they gorged themselves on far more magic than they would ever be able to contain. The Seikirei Minaka was controlling flinched in perfect unison, Minaka himself was surprised on the other side of their eyes and his instinctual reactions showed up on them instead of him.

I apparated, and blessed every lucky star in the sky when it worked. I reappeared behind Minaka, and threw my Kagune forward. I managed to sink my five bladed limbs an inch deep into his torso between his ribs before the third Seikirei hit me with a blast of raw magic that flung me away from Minaka. I scrambled, stabbing my Kagune as hard and fast as I could to try and keep myself from falling off the roof. Minaka staggered, and leaned on the Seikirei that had blasted me, which was still standing with its hands outstretched, not having the ability to retract her limbs without an explicit command from her master.

"That was uncivil," Minaka growled, and turned to me. The back of his white suit was turning red as he bled into the colorless fabric. He drew his wand with the same wrist flick and mumbled a few words while pointing the wand towards himself, and the growth of the red spot stopped. I would've attacked again, but he was staring straight at me and the Seikirei was already poised to fire another attack.

"If you are done mimicking the nobility of your betters than I shall stop deigning to waste my refinement and sophistication on you," he glared at me. "I desire your soul to further my research into the tree of life. Submit to me and I will treat you kindly. Resist and I will make my every endeavour a torture for you to experience." All three Seikirei moved to stand in a triangle around him, two in the front and one behind him. As one, all three of them sprouted luminous prismatic wings, and they and Minaka rose into the air, all of them glowing with an overflow of raw power.

I grimaced and used one hand to rub my stomach gently, the apparition I'd tried against Minaka having upset my stomach where the remnants of Miya's magic-infused flesh clashed with my final trump card.

XXXXXXX

 **You know I originally planned on doing homework and trying to find a summer job. Then came inspiration... who needs to be responsible anyways.**


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